
Glass. 
Book- 







PRESENTED BY 






BY 

Studies 


THE SAME AUTHOR, 


in Hegel's Philosophy 




of Religion. 


WITH AN 


APPENDIX ON CHRISTIAN 




UNITY. 




Price, . . . $2.00. 









REASON AND AUTHORITY 



IN 



RELIGION 






BY! 

J. MACBRIDE STERRETT, D.D. 

IV 

PROFESSOR OF ETHICS AND APOLOGETICS IN SEABURY 



DIVINITY SCHOOL 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS WIIILTAKER 

2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSB 
l8 9 I 






Copyright 1891, 
BY J. MACBR1DE STERRETT. 

Gift 
Author 

( Person) 






,J 



"I 



TO 



Jltotfjer 



THE 

FIRST REASONABLE AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. 



PREFACE. 



Current discussions of contemporary 
religious themes and thinkers. 

J. MAOBRIDE STERRETT. 

Faribault, Minn., 
October, 1800. 



ERRATA. 

Page 43. Ninth line from top for Kiarevojuev read TriaTevnjLtev. 

148. Sixth line from bottom for read of. 

148. Second line from bottom for his read this. 

" 149. Last line for profoundly read professedly. 

" 155. Sixth line from bottom, for orientates read orientates. 

164. Fifth line from top for requat read regnat. 

170. Twelfth line from bottom for Nors read Noi>r. 

179. Third line from top for Nors read Xoi-. 

178. Fourth line from bottom for historio read historico. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 

THE GROUND OF CERTITUDE IN RELIGION. 
PART I. 

Reason and Authority in Religion. 

PAGE 

Discredit of Old Authorities 15 

The Function of Criticism 16 

Theories of Society Supplanting Theories of 

the Individual 20 

Danger of Weak Romanticizing 22 

The Right of Private Judgment 25 

Ground and the " Urgrund " of Religion ... 27 

Religion Genuinely Human 30 

What is Religion ? 31 

Revelation 32 

Faith 34 

Sub-personal Conceptions of the First Prin- 
ciple : >6 

The Ultimate Conception of the First Prin- 
ciple 38 

Religion Has a History 41 



x COy TEATS. 

PAGE 

"I Believe " implies a " They Believed " and 

a u We Believe " 43 

What Do I Believe ? 44 

Why Do I Believe the Catholic Faith ? 45 

part n. 

The Psychological Forms of Religion. 

Three Chief Forms : Feeling, Knowing and 

Willing 49 

1. Religion as Feeling 50 

2. Religion as Knowing 53 

(a) That of Conception 53 

The Catechetical and Dogmatic Pe- 
riod 56 

(b) Reflection, Criticism and Doubt 60 

Saintly Doubt 61 

Sinful Doubt 65 

Faith as the Ground of Much Skepti- 
cism 66 

Religious Knowledge Conditioned by 

the Incarnation 68 

(c) Comprehension the Highest Form of 

Knowing 69 

The Function of Philosophy 71 

The Necessity of Religious Certitude . . 75 

Philosophy of History 78 

^y Philosophy of Religion 79 



CONTENTS. xi 

PAGE 

Modern Thought as Christian Thought 81 

Use of the Nicene Symbol 82 

Non-CEcumenical Theology and Theories.. . 84 

The Law of Liberty also the Law of Duty. . . 85 

The " Must " of the Bible 86 

Open Questions 90 

Inadequacy of Mere Theoretical Knowledge. 93 



PAKT III. 

Religion as Willing. 

This Rome-element Records Its Creed in Its 

Deed 96 

The Moral Argument for Christianity 97 

Instituted Christianity — the Kingdom of God 99 
Mechanical and Ethical Conceptions of the 

Church 99 

The Church and the State 100 

Greek, Roman and Germanic Elements in 

Modern Christianity L02 

The Christian Consciousness and Ant bority. 104 

Self-Consciousness and Certitude 107 



xii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER II. 
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. 

PAGE 

Two Notable Books on Authority in Re- 
ligion 109 

The Authors of the " Lux Mundi " Ill 

How Influenced by German Criticism and 
Philosophy, by Prof. T. H. Green, and the 
Oxford Hegelianism. — Their Appeal to 

Reason 1 14 

The Divine Immanence 117 

The Historical Method 119 

" Open Questions " Granted 127 

Dr. Martineau's Previous Works ; Their 

Character and Style 129 

His Bald Individualism 134 

His Critical Method and Negative Results.. . 146 
Criticism of His Book by Contrast with the 

"Lux Mundi 5 ' 150 

Bouleversment of this Party's Method 154 

These New Leaders Change It from a 

" Party " into a " School of Thought ". . . . 158 
Their Adoption of Hegelian Conceptions of 
Rationality, Revelation and Authority. . . . 164 



CONTENTS. xiii 

PAGE 

Two Criticisms of Their Work , 178 

(1) Their Conception of the Church too 

Insular to be Quite Catholic 178 

(2) The Danger of Our Uncritical Restor- 

ation of So-called Catholic Customs, 

or the Vagaries of Ritualism 182 

Welcome Their Spirit and Method, if not all 
of Their Results 183 



CHAPTER I. 

THE GROUND OF CERTITUDE IN RELIGION. 



PART I. 

REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. 

Discredit of Old Authorities. 

" Father, don't you know that we left 
that word i must ' behind when we came to 
this new country?" This was Patrick's 
reply to a priest, who said that he must take 
his children from the public school and must 
send them to the parish school. This fairly 
represents the uttered or concealed reply 
of the mass of thinking" men in the modern 
world to any presentation of the old au- 
thorities, when prescribed without further 
ground than an iincriticised imperative. 

We have left behind the must of an 
infallible Church, of an infallible Bible, 

and of an unerring reason. Kacli one o\' 






16 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

these m turn has been abstracted from 
an organic process and proposed as the 
authoritative basis of belief. The inade- 
quacy of the proof for such infallibility has 
rendered this claim of each one of no effect. 
The abstract reason, which was first used 
to discredit the other two, has fallen into 
the pit which itself digged, and de pro- 
fundi s rise its agnostic moans. Hence 
the task laid upon us in these days is that 
of inquiring whether these old musts do 
not have a real authority, other and more 
ethical than the one rightfully denied ; to 
see whether they do not have a natural 
and essential authority that rational men 
must accept in order to be rational. 

The Function of Criticism. 

A criticism which is merely negative is 
both irrational and unhuman. The func- 
tion of criticism is to be the dynamic 
forcing on from one static phase of belief 
and institution to another, to destroy only 
by conserving in higher fulfilled form. Its 



IN RELIGION. 17 

aim can only be to restore as reason what 
it first seeks to destroy as the unreason of 
mere might ; to restore as essential realized 
freedom what it momentarily rejects as 
external necessity; Such work involves a 
thorough reformation of the whole edifice 
of dogma and institution, a thorough re- 
appreciation of the genuine worth of these 
works of the human spirit under divine 
guidance. 

Such a task implies an ideal of knowl- 
edge vastly different from that of ordina- 
ry rationalism. Thai holds an abstract 
subjective conception of truth, imagined 
under the form of mathematical equali- 
ty or identity. It has no place for de- 
velopment or- organic process, and none 
for comprehension of concrete experience 
which it vainly tries to force into its me- 
chanical forms. This method, on the con- 
traiy, simply undertakes to understand 
What is, or concrete experience, under the 

conception of organic development in his- 
toric process. It can attempt no demon- 



18 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

stration of the organic process of religion 
by anything external to it. It seeks only 
to give an intelligent description of the 
process. The process itself gives the con- 
ception of its rationality. It declines to 
abstract any part of the process or to 
seize any one of its static moments and 
make that the measure or the proof of the 
whole, as ordinary apologetics attempt to 
do. The real history of religion, then, 
like the real history of any organism in 
nature, is its true rationality and vindica- 
tion. 

The reason appealed to, also, is that 
which manifests itself in the corporate 
process, and not in the individual member. 
A religious individual is an abstraction. 
The truth is the whole concrete historical 
institution of which he is a member. Only 
as he experiences or mirrors the various 
stages of this organic life can he under- 
stand or express the rationality of religion. 
His certitude rests upon authority, which 
he, as autonomic, must finally impose up- 



IN RELIGION. 19 

on himself. Ojective rationality can only 
thus become subjective and afford real 
grounds of certitude. Such a method of 
acquiring* rational certitude may not satisfy 
those whose ideal of knowledge is that of or- 
dinary rationalism. But have we not vainly 
tried to satisfy such an ideal long- enough ? 
Has not the century and a half of " the 
age of reason" landed us in agnosticism, 
from which it cannot extricate us ? Are 
we not ready to abandon the attempt 
of such rationalism and try the higher 
method? This method consists of an 
historical and a philosophical study of 
religion. 

The historical inquiry should first -enable 
us to see the value of Bible and Church as 
records and aids of the religious life of tin* 
past. The philosophic inquiry should then 
enable us to see their necessity and worth 

to the religious life of our times. Neither 

of these methods is so irrational as to 
dare to sectarianize our religions life from 
that of the past. Both see this life as a 



20 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

continuous process, and only seek to under- 
stand and interpret what has been, as an 
aid to what should be. Neither of them 
are individualistic. Both of them study the 
individual as an organic member of the 
social whole, recognizing that the wisdom 
and the work of the many, especially as an 
organized community, is always greater 
than that of any of its members ; reformers 
never being more than organs of the nascent 
communal spirit. 

Theories of Society Supplanting 
Theories of the Individual. 
The whole swing- of the pendulum of 
thought to-day is away from the individual 
and towards the social point of view. Theo- 
ries of society are supplanting theories of 
the individual. The solidarity of man is 
the regnant thought in both the scientific 
and the historical study of man. It is even 
running into the extreme of a determinism 
that annihilates the individual. Both 
theology and ecclesiasticism have passed 



IN RELIGION. 21 

through this extreme, which we may call 
the Chinese phase of belief and life. The 
Protestant world is slow to yield to the 
Zeitgeist heralding* a retreat from in- 
dividualism to socialism, dreading a rep- 
etition of its tyranny. But the swing 
of the pendulum has also begun in these 
spheres. "Martyrs of disgust" m&y be 
the loudest and foremost fuglemen in the 
retreat. But this does not prevent the her- 
alds of concrete reason from advancing 
backward to reclaim their neglected heri- 
tage. The institution and the creed of the 
whole are being seen to have a rational au- 
thority that must be recognized. Society 
is seen to be the obligatory theatre for the 
realization of* freedom. Its authority is 
seen to be that of order and harmony of 

individual minds and wills. No Church no 
Christian, no oecumenical need no right 
belief. 

But Church and (A-i^^l are already old. 

We cannol manufacture totally new ones. 
Korean we accept the old Tonus at their 



22 RE AS ON AND A UTHORITY 

old worth, as fetters of thought and action. 
We have outgrown that form of their 
authority, as the child outgrows the pa- 
ternal authority. So we think. But the 
analogy is not perfect. Besides, the au- 
thority of the father as that of a full- 
grown man, which develops the powers 
of the child, is never fully shaken off. Nor 
does the individual member of a community 
ever outgrow the larger wisdom of the 
whole. At best the authority can only be 
translated from the form of coercive into 
the form of moral authority. And this is 
what we should aim at in our re-appraise 
ment of orthodoxy and the Church. 

Danger of Weak Romanticizing. 

The danger of a weak romanticizing, of 
a pathetically pessimistic distrust of rea- 
son causing an uncritical acceptance of all 
the old bonds, should not deter us from 
seeking a rationale of them that will com- 
pel an ethical submission to their rightful 
authority. Bat it should put us on our 



IN RELIGION. 23 

guard against humoring* a weak phase of 
the human spirit, which comes when its 
wings droop from weariness, so that a 
plunge into the ocean beneath seems relief. 
It should also put us on our guard lest the 
oncoming of this social view be permitted 
to take an abstract form, and thus crush 
out the might and right of personality. 
We should be alert to carry with us all 
the hard-won fruits of Protestantism. 
The danger is that we may find our- 
selves slaves again. 

The two phases of authority for which 
Apologetics ordinarily contend are the in- 
tellectual and the practical. The first is 
that of creed or orthodoxy, the other is 
that of institution or Church. Till re- 
cently the burden of Apologetics has been 
the maintenance of orthodoxy, which has 
largely meant Calvinism, founded upon an 
unhistorical interpretation of an infallible 
Bible. Such Apologetics have had their 

day. They have almost destroyed both 

orthodoxy and the Bible. The Other phase 



24 RE A S ON AND A UTHO RITY 

of Apolog*etics now claims to be heard. 
It claims to include the task of the former 
phase. The Church, as the author of the 
creed and the Bible, proposes to vindicate 
them as parts of its process — as its own 
offspring* — in vindicating' itself as the 
practical embodiment and promoter of 
Christianity. We need scarcely disclaim 
any sympathy with this phase as repre- 
sented by Romanist and High- Anglican. 
The common method of both is arbitrary, 
abstract, unhistorical, dog-matic and un- 
convincing*. It is the " must " which Pat- 
rick left behind in the old country. But 
Patrick never leaves his patriotism behind. 
He has a double sort of patriotism for 
both his old and his new country. He is 
unreflecting*ly wiser and more concrete 
than the abstract rationalist who owns 
"no tribe, nor state, nor home," nor con- 
tent, except what he makes for himself. 
Nor can we leave the Church behind. It 
has helped make us what we are. The 
rational form of this method, then, com- 



IN RELIGION. 25 

mands sympathy. It should include a 
historical and psychological study of the 
institution, in order to arrive at a philo- 
sophical vindication of its rational author- 
ity over individuals, as constitutive of 
their essential well being*. Tins affords a 
relative vindication of the various phases, 
and an absolute vindication of the whole 
process and its results. The end justifies 
the means, is immanent in and constitutive 
of these. But this process -.and result are 
in and through the community. Chris- 
tianity is the Church. Its ground of cer- 
titude and authority is in the whole. It is 
in the light of this general conception of 
an organic social process thai we must 
seek for the ground of certitude in both 

subjective and objective religion. 

The Right of Private Judgment. 

Certitude is conviction resting on dis- 
cernment as a constant element in all the 
activity Of our mental and spiritual facul- 
ties. The certitude resting <m authority or 



26 RE AS ON AND A UTHORITY 

on testimony really rests on a discernment 
of their reasonableness. Thus certitude is 
personal. It is the yea and amen of pri- 
vate judgment. It comes from the mani- 
festation of the truth by God through 
media. In the case of religious certitude, 
the inclusive medium is the Church. But 
no doctrine of the Church as an organism 
that denies the right and duty of private 
judgment can remain an ethical one. 
Protestantism has bought this at too great 
a price to be bartered away. It is only as 
against an abstract individualism that ig- 
nores the patent fact that one is what he is 
by virtue of the social tissue in which he 
lives, that there is need of reasserting the 
authority of this constitutive environment. 
But this must be an ethical organism, in- 
clusive of, and living only in and through 
its individual members. It is just as true 
that the Church exists in and through its 
individual members as it is that they exist 
in and through the Church. It is a king- 
dom of persons where all are kings, because 



IN RELIGION. 27 

all are persons, and not an abstract exter- 
nal authority. It is an org-anism of organ- 
isms, a person of persons, a Holy Spirit 
that only lives and realizes itself on earth 
through personal members. This much 
is said here to guard against any sus- 
picion of reverting to the abstract concep- 
tion of the authority of the Church as a 
ground of certitude, which was " the infi- 
nite falsehood" of mediaeval ecclesiasti- 
cism. 

Ground and the " Urgrund" of 
Religion. 

I have used the singular, ground, in- 
stead of the plural, grounds, because what 
we wish is a vital organic universal, in- 
stead of a number of abstract particulars. 
"To be confined within the range of mere 
grounds, is the position and principle 
characterizing the sophists.' 9 (Hegel's 
Logic, p 196.) This species of accident- 
al, arbitrary, special-pleading reasoning; 
this giving a pro for every con ; this age 



28 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

of reason (of grounds) in Apologetics, had 
full sweep in the eighteenth century and 
far enough into the nineteenth to be re- 
sponsible for much of the prevalent scepti- 
cism. 

To-day, the ordinary grounds or proofs 
of our religion are justly called in question, 
and we are asking for a fundamental uni- 
versal ground (an Urgrund) of them all — 
prophecy, miracle, the incarnation, the 
Bible, the Church, and reason — for the 
authority of all these authorities 

This Urgrund must be an organic first 
principle which unfolds into a philosophy 
of religion as the only final and satisfac- 
tory Apologetic for Christianity; a first 
principle which vindicates religion as a 
genuine and necessary factor in the life of 
man, and Christianit t y as the fruition of all 
religion. Resting either in the simple 
faith of childhood, or on abstract external 
evidences, or yielding blindly to external 
authority by arbitrary wilful repression 
of thought, as did the late Cardinal New- 



IN RELIGION. 29 

man ; none of these methods are possible 
to-day. Mere dogma and mere external 
evidences and authority arc no antidote to 
doubt, no grounds of certitude in our 
clay. 

It is needless to multiply words in de- 
scribing the patent phase of current relig- 
ious thought. It is, in brief, one of unrest 
and doubt, and yet also one of faith and 
reconstruction. It is attempting the neces- 
sary feat of swallowing and digesting its 
own offspring of doubts. It is on its way to 
an Urgrund which cannot be something 
outside of itself. This can be nothing but 
the generic principle which, as constitutive 
and organic, is implicit throughout its 
whole process. At best there can be but 
an approximate comprehension of this im- 
manent life-principle. But it is the task 

which 1 he thought ful human spirit feelsas 

a categorical imperative. There is an un- 
derlying faith or certitude even in those 

phases where negative results are most 

conspicuous. There is an everlasting yea 



30 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

beneath doubt which alone renders doubt 
possible. 

Religion Genuinely Human. 

Religion is acknowledged to be one of 
the great human universals, co-extensive 

with man's history, and as varied in form 
as his culture. It is truly and essentially 
human. It is a necessary part of human- 
ity's life. Xo religion, no man ; perfect 
religion, perfect man. Organizations may 
decay and theologies crumble, but the re- 
ligious spirit lives on through and above 
these changes, making for itself ever more 
congenial and adequate manifestations and 
organs of its perennial life — rising* on step- 
ping stones of its petrified forms to higher 
ones. With art and philosophy it forms 
the triad of man's relations with the Ab- 
solute Spirit. In these three inter-relat- 
ed and mutually sustaining* spheres is ex- 
hibited the perfection of his spiritual char- 
acter and functions. The creative object, 
the ultimate and constitutive ground of 
them all, is God. 



IN RELIGION. 31 

What is Religion ? 

What is religion ? A descriptive defini- 
tion of the totality of phenomena which 
constitutes religion would be too extensive. 
So too would be a mere enumeration of the 
definitions of it that have been proposed. 
But most of such definitions have a com- 
mon heart, and proceed from a varied 
reflection of a common truth. Religion is 
at least a conscious reverential relation of 
man to God. It may be " morality tinged 
with emotion," but that emotion must 
come from impact of the soul with God. 
It is a spiritual activity of self-relation to 
the great " Power not ourselves," through 
feeling, thought and will. It is a striv- 
ing to fall upward from the mere physical 
side of our life. But this implies — and im- 
plies as its essential presupposition — the 
falling down, the self-relation of this Power 
to man. We must therefore define relig- 
ion as the reciprocal relation or com- 
munion of God and man. 



32 REASON AND A UTHORITY 

These two sides of this organic process 
may be termed (1) Revelation, (2) Faith. 
That is, the self relation of God to man 
constitutes the conception of revelation ; 
the self-relation of man to God constitutes 
that of faith. The two elements are cor- 
relative, though, that of God's activity is 
both chronologically and logically primal, 
and evocative of the other. Thus religion 
rests upon a universal. It is not merely sub- 
jective. We cannot abstract faith from 
revelation. For it is only both together 
that give us the concrete content of religion . 

Revelation. 

(1). Revelation is the moment of divine 
self- showing in the organic process which 
constitutes religion. As the self -relation 
of God to man, it is a primal and perennial 
act, which, in religion, is recognized as a 
phase of one's own personal experience. 
As immediate, it forms the background 
of all human life — sentient, mental and 
moral. It forms the si^pra-nature of hu- 



IN RELIGION 33 

manity, and is creative of it. Back of, 
beneath, immanent in (u^rd) all that is 
human, there is that which constitutes 
and sustains it. This metaphysics of man, 
mental and moral, is the immanent, im- 
mediate relation of God to humanity. 
But the term is generally confined to what 
w r e may call mediated revelation. God's 
self-relation to us is continually mediated 
and brought to our consciousness through 
our physical, mental, moral and social re- 
lations. He is immanent in these rela- 
tions, and thus reveals himself to our 
conscious experience. It is through our 
knowledge of nature, through our knowl- 
edge and love of our brethren — that is, 
through our knowledge of the physical 
and moral world-order — that we become 
conscious of God's relation to us. Signs 
and tokens and mighty works, Bible and 
Church, family and social life, have all 
been used as media of this revelation. 
Revelation, however mediated, constitutes 
the objective side of religion. 



34 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

Faith. 

(2). Faith is the subjective side. It is 
man's conscious apprehension of God thus 
related to him through revelation. Tt em- 
braces all the constituent elements of the 
human side of religion — the apprehension 
of the Godward side of all that we do or 
say oi* think. Faith is faith. This tauto- 
logical definition is compulsory, from the 
nature of the activity. It is a primal, 
basal activity of the human spirit. It is 
the simplest, and yet may be the most 
complex, activity of conscious man. It 
has no special organ and is no special 
faculty, but is the dynamic in all our 
faculties. It contains elements of feeling, 
thinking and willing, because it is the 
actus purus prevenient and co-operating 
with all these faculties. It is the spirit's 
apprehension of realities through these 
faculties. It is its practical self-conscious- 
ness of the Absolute. It is the self prac- 
tically conscious of itself, in its relation 



IN RELIGION. 35 

with God. Thus it is only another name 
for the highest phase of self-consciousness. 
Such self-consciousness is never merely 
subjective. Its contents are the results 
of the mediation of all its physical, social 
and religious environment and training, 
and ultimately of God, through these 
media. Religious faith — and specifically 
Christian faith — is God's children's cry of 
Abba, Father. It is their apprehension 
of their divine sonship, the responsive 
thrill of emotion awakened by the con- 
sciousness of God's paternal relation to 
them. Abraham's faith was his conscious- 
ness of friendship with God. Our faith 
is our consciousness of divine sonship 
through his eternal Son, Jesus Christ. 
Such Christian faith is a vrvy profound 
and simple, and yet a most complex stage 
of self-consciousness, It involves the me- 
diation of a Christian education, which 
implies that of eighteen centuries of the 
Church's life. Thus, while our faith is 
Subjective and personal, it is only so be- 



36 . REASON AND AUTHORITY 

cause we have been educated into the con- 
scious possession of the Christian heritage 
of centuries Our personal subjective faith 
itself, as well as objective faith, is ground- 
ed upon and mediated for us through in- 
stitutional Christianity. 

Thus the objective ground of religion is 
God, and the subjective ground faith — or 
the simple apprehension, through more or 
less media, of this relation — thus convert- 
ing the whole into the process of recipro- 
cal relations between God and man, which 
constitute religion. 

Sub-personal Conceptions of the First 
Principle. 

It will not do to substitute for God " the 
power not ourselves," Law, Force, Sub- 
stance, oi* any s?6&-personal category. And 
the non-personal is always s?<6-personal. 
It may be acknowledged that some scien- 
tific conceptions of law, order, nature, cos- 
mos, are higher in one sense than some 
anthropomorphic conceptions of God, but 



IN RELIGION. 37 



they are never swpra-personal, and can 
never afford the conscious relation we call 
religion. Our analysis of the content of 
consciousness can only arbitrarily stop 
short of that of self consciousness, or self- 
determined totality. 

If the charge is made that our concep- 
tion of the first principle as personal is 
merely subjective — the imaginative reflec- 
tion of our own mind upon phenomena — it 
may at leasl be met by the counter-charge 
of the same subjectivism in scientific con- 
ceptions. Matter, law, force, are equally 
subjective measurements of the objective 
by the subjective. But tins argumentum 
ad hominem is only a side thrust of 
thought on its way through and above all 
such imperfect conceptions of the first 
principle. All such conceptions are im- 
plicitly religious. They imply as their 
ground the full conception of God. Hence 
the scientist is sane only as he becomes 
devout. But this criticism of the cate- 
gories of ordinary science, making explicit 



38 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

its real ground, is the work of philosophy 
proper. It is the needed corrective of 
scientific agnosticism. 

Such a criticism of the categories of 
thought reaches a system of categories 
with God as the implicit and the ultimate 
one. We shall refer to this later on, but only 
superficially . Religion grasps this without 
reflection. Philosophy has nothing further 
to do than to point out the necessity and 
rationality of the human spirit reaching 
and resting in communion with this per- 
sonal First Principle or Urgrund. The In- 
carnation, as the perfect realization of this 
bond between God and man, and the exten- 
sion of the Incarnation in history, are the 
essential media of both present religious 
and philosophical apprehension of this 
generic Urgrund. In neither case is it 
reached directly or intuitively. 

The Ultimate Conception of the First 
Principle. 

Religion, then, as a part of man's con- 



IN RELIGION, 39 

sciousness, has its ultimate ground in 
the eternal and loving reason of the First 
Principle of all things. Faith itself, or the 
subjective side, is necessarily reduced to 
the action of the Divine Spirit in man. 
The consciousness of this actual vital rela- 
tion, or reciprocal bond between God and 
man, is a primal and perennial fact, mul 
the ultimate ground of religious certitude. 
Consciousness in man is implicitly a know- 
ing of self with God (con-scius) 9 a,n<\ hence 
of knowing God in knowing self. This is 
the real significance of the ontological 
proof of the existence of God. 

This bond is as real a relation as the 
causal relation. Indeed, il is often identi- 
fied with this relation. Our heredity is 
from ( rod, even I hough il be t hrougta lower 
forms of life, and our goal is also God, even 
though it be through imperfect manhood. 
The ground of religion we find, then, to be 
nothing extrinsic. Il does not need a 
special handle in the way of external rea- 
sons. It is not founded upon nor mis- 



40 REASON AND A UTHORITY 

tained by the various alleged proofs. 
These may vary and pass away, but the 
activity continues as a necessary function 
of normal humanity. Religion will be 
found at the grave as well as at the cradle 
of man, because God is the immanent and 
transcendent essence of man.* 

God is the ultimate metapl^sics of man, 
physical, mental and spiritual ; the real 
substance ; the continuously creative and 
sustaining power in His offspring. The 
Benedicite is the spontaneous expression 
of the whole groaning and rejoicing crea- 
tion. If men should be so insensate as not 
to worship, " the stones would immediate- 
ly cry out" an anthem of praise. The 
Psalmist's exclamation, " Thou hast beset 
me behind and before ; . . Thou hast cov- 
ered me in my mother's womb," voices 
the consciousness of this ultimate meta- 
physics of all things physical. This Ur- 

* u As the personality of man has its foundation 
in the personality of God, so the realization 
of personality brings man always nearer to God." 
—Mulford's " Republic of God/' p. 28. 



IN RELIGION. 41 

grund is creatively present before con- 
sciousness comes to raise the new-born man 
above the brutes. It begets religion as 
soon as consciousness of this power, in 
however low a form, appears, binding 
man back to (re-ligare) or causing' him to 
review (re-leger^e) the fact of this primal 
relation. This consciousness varies in de- 
gree, strength, form and clearness of con- 
tent. But it is the ground of the various 
grounds that we can offer as causal of this, 
which is itself the cause of them . Prophecy 
and miracle, the Bible, Church and rea- 
son also, are all its offspring, and authen- 
ticated by it, rather than the reverse. 

Religion Has a History. 

But it is impossible that this fundamen- 
tal fact of consciousness could be perfect at 

oner. Religion, individual and racial, has 
a history. It begins as an immediate, in- 
definite apprehension el* the fact in the sub- 
jective consciousness, but it expands and 
wins definite content with the growth of 



42 BE AS OX AXD AUTHORITY 

human consciousness in all spheres of ex- 
perience. Thus subjective religion ex- 
pands with new revelation and apprehen- 
sion of it into objective forms of creed, cult 
and institution, which in turn educe and 
strengthen it. The same spontaneous 
consciousness of " the Power not our- 
selves " that led the childhood of the race 
to personify earth and sky, also led Plato 
and Clement and Hegel, through the medi- 
ation of Greek and Christian culture, to 
proclaim the essential and perennial kin- 
ship of man with God, in all the concrete 
experience of his life and institutions. 

There is more than an analogy, there is 
a real kinship between the psychological 
and objective development in the individu- 
al and the race. So Ave may trace a com- 
mon outline for both. Indeed its develop- 
ment in the individual is only rendered 
possible through connection with a com- 
munal life. It is only by a false abstrac- 
tion that the religion of the individual can 
be considered separately. Here as else- 



IN RELIGION.. 43 

where the universal is prior to, and consti- 
tutive of, the individual. But this is not 
an abstract universal. It is the concrete 
organism of which he is a vital member. 

" I believe " implies a " They believed " 
and a " We believe" 

One can saj r I believe {credo) only by 
first having- joined with others in saying 
" we believe" (tii6tevo^iev) % The / always 
implies the we. It equals to-da} r the social- 
ized and Christianized man of the nine- 
teenth century. I believe, because they — 
eighteen centuries of Christian Kinsmen — 
have believed ; and because we, the Univer- 
sal Church, believe. Still, the subjective 
factor is central, and our socialized faith 
is personal communion with God. The 
individual has absorbed, and has been re- 
alized, not annihilated by, the universal. 
Religion remains to the end a personal re- 

lation 1 > a Person, however much it has 

hem nourished and quickened by th * com- 
munity. "1 believe" now means the sub- 



44 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

jective, personal self-affirmation, " the 
everlasting yea ,? of our Christianized con- 
sciousness. 

What Do I Believe ? 

But what do I believe ? What is the 
definite content of the religious relation of 
the individual with God ? 

I believe the con sense of the Christiaa 
consciousness in regard to God, man and 
the world. I believe " The Catholic 
Faith." We are far be3 r ond the faith of 
childhood, of primitive man. The historic 
process of revelation and faith has rendered 
primitive immediate faith impossible and 
irrational. Both the act and the content 
have been endlessly mediated for us. Our 
consciousness of God has been enriched by 
that of a host of heroes of the faith, and 
by the cult and dogma of centuries of 
Christendom. Questions have been asked 
and answerd for us before we were born. 
We have been born into the heritage of 
these answered questions in the shape of 



IN RELIGION. 45 

the oecumenical creeds, though enough 
open questions still remain to make us 
heroes of faith, and our generation an age 
of faith. But I believe. This heritage of 
the Christian faith is mine, only by the 
subjective personal activity of appropria- 
tion and realization. The Creeds are the 
records of a series of deep insights into the 
content of the Christian consciousness. 
The mastery of these is an ascent of the 
individual into the universal — something 
that cannot be ours by mere rote-learning, 
but, only as we think over, verify, re-create 
or experience anew within ourselves. Sub- 
jective faith remains the most important 
element of our spiritual life. We cannot 
be merely passive recipients of the most 
opulent heritage. And yet tin 1 universal, 
the objective, rightly claims its place. We 
Bee this, also, when we ask, further: 

Why Do I Believe the Catholic Faith/ 
117/// do I believe the ( iatholic Faith ? 

What renders it possible forme to make 



46 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

this my own personal faith? Why does 
my faith, my consciousness of relation with 
God, have this definite form and content ? 
This form of faith, though personal, is not 
an immediate consciousness — a primitive 
unmediated revelation of God. It is not 
a matter of mere individual feeling* or in- 
tuition. The why can only be answered 
by reading the whole history of his devel- 
opment, through the interaction of sub- 
jectivism and objectivism, of the self and 
its environment. A fair analysis of this 
process likewise leads back to God as its 
ultimate ground. The psychological and 
historical lead back to this metaphysical 
Urgrund. This stage of what we call 
Christian nurture is an indispensable phase 
in the development of both strength and 
definiteness of faith. It is here that the 
rationality of authoritative catechetical 
Church teaching and Christian influence of 
family and community are to be justi- 
fied. 

It is chiefly in this ivhat and ivhy of relig- 



IN RELIGION. 47 

ion that we meet with grounds that seem 
to be extrinsic and accidental. The task, 
then, is to translate these grounds into 
rationality; to discover their place, that 
renders them necessary and rational ele- 
ments of the organic process of the relation 
of God and man. This task includes the 
psychological study of the development of 
man in the social organism, and the his- 
torical study of the development of the 
social organism itself, on the way hack 
to the ultimate or metaphysical ground. 

The faith, though once delivered, could 
never, from the condition of the case, even 
in Christianity, be once for all delivered to 
the individual or the community. This 
has had, is having, and will have a psy- 
chological history in both. Faith as an 
activity is forever the same, but its content, 
and the interpretation of this content, va- 
ry and develop with new conditions and 
culture. The life-giving Spirit inspires 

to some new form of practical religion, to 

meet new issues. The type of Christianity 



48 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

changes. Then the intellectual seers note 
this life, and modify the old theology so as 
to include it. 

The question then is, whether the environ- 
ment leading- to change of both vital and 
credal form of Christianity can be justified ; 
whether, in theological language, we can 
see the hand of Providence; or, in the 
language of philosophy, whether we can 
discern the immanent logic or reason thus 
objectif3 r ing itself in rational forms ? Or, 
if we restrict credal form to the oecumeni- 
cal symbols, and the normal ecclesiastical 
form to that of the primitive Church, the 
question is whether we can discern the 
rational^ in the culture of Greece and 
Rome as well as in that of Judea, which 
makes " them legitimate ingredients in a 
catholic, complete Christianity." Can we, 
in other words, reach a philosophy of re- 
ligion that justifies the multiform devel- 
opment of the two inseparable elements of 
religion — revelation and faith ; God's seek- 
ing and man's finding ; God's adhesion to 
man and man's adhesion to God ? Such 



IN RELIGION. 49 

a philosophy of religion must be based 
upon a philosoplry of history which must 
be simply a rational comprehension of em- 
pirical history. We thus indicate a work 
far beyond the limits of this present essay. 
We can do no more than note briefly the 
psychological forms through which religion 
passes in racial and individual experience, 
catching glimpses of the immanent ration- 
ality in the whole process. 



PART II. 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION. 

Three Chief Forms : Feeling, Knowing 
and Willing. 

We designate these three forms as (1) 
that of Feeling, (2) tint of Knowing in 
its three phases of (a) conception, (b) 
reflection and (c) comprehension, and (:*) 
that of Willing. 

These are inseparable parts of conscious- 
ness, that we can only artificially sepa- 



50 REASON AXD AUTHORITY 

rate for purpose of study. The univer- 
sal element of thinking* is more or less 
present in the particular element of feel- 
ing-, and willing fuses them both into the 
concrete individuality of person or epoch. 
But in different ages and persons, and in 
the same person at different times, one or 
the other of these phases is more empha- 
sized than the others. Hence religion va- 
ries in its psychological form. 

1. Religion as Feeling. 

Religion exists primarily in the form of 
feeling. Its genesis belongs to the primi- 
tive depths in which the soul is just dis- 
tinguishing itself from the great not-self 
about it. It is the first coming into con- 
sciousness of the pre-conscious fact that 
every one is born of God. And yet this 
feeling is generally mediated by some 
religious instruction. The power behind 
and before is first felt, rather than known. 
This gives the sense of dependence, which 
always remains an integral part of re- 



IN RELIGION. 51 

ligion. It may run through the gamut 
of reverence, fear, dismay and terror, or 
devil-worship. Or this power may be felt 
as a congenial and beneficent one, and the 
feeling run through the gamut of rever- 
ence, confidence, love, peace and ecstasy, 
or mysticism. Fear and confidence are 
the two marked elements in this phase of 
religion. There is no lack of certitude in 
it. The unreasoned certitude of feeling 
hallows any object, from a log of wood to 
I he sky, from a Jupiter to a Jehovah. The 
fetich- worshipper has as much cert it ude as 
the Mariolater. All religions alike afford 
this certitude to their worshippers. 

Historical il lust rat ions of religions and 
of individuals in this phase will occur to 
every one So also will the names of 
Jacobi and Schleiermachor, who, in their 
reaction from vulgar rationalism, tried to 
make religion entirely a matter of feeling 
or of the heart . The eert it ude o\' this 
Btage, I have said, is no measure of the 

worth of t he contents of feeling. Deaf' 



52 REASON AND A Ul HORITY 

fectibus non disputandum. Schleierma- 
cher went so far, we know, as to say 
that every religion or religious feeling* was 
good and true ; thus proposing a philoso- 
phy " as much contrary to revealed re- 
ligion as to rational knowledge/' and 
making anything like a communion of 
worshippers impossible. Each one has 
his oivn feeling, and this may be so em* 
phasized as to lead to both sectarianism 
and atheism. 

But, strictly speaking, this elementary 
phase of religion is quite indefinite as to 
what it feels. Until other elements enter 
in, there is no personal object given to 
worship. It represents the^ first con- 
scious mysterious impulse toward the infi- 
nite and eternal. It represents those ele- 
ments of reverence and confidence which 
made our Saviour promise the kingdom of 
heaven to children. But it is a phase 
into which other elements do speedily en- 
ter. The activity of the human spirit in 
relation with the Infinite Spirit impels 



IN RELIGION. 53 

it on to definite conceptions of God and 
content of feeling*. Milk for babes, strong- 
er nourishment for the growing child. 

2. Religion as Knotving. 

The phase of knowing in religion.* 
We distinguish here three phases of 

knowing : (a) Conception, (b) Reflection, 

and (c) Comprehension. 

(a.) That of Conception. 

Mere feeling is rather an hypothetical 
stage of activity. Objects that produce 
feeling are soon named, or learned, or 
imagined. The child is soon initiated into 
definite religious conceptions which nour- 
ish his religious activity. This introduc- 
tion into objective forms of belief and 
worship is congenial with his developing 
intelligence. It helps him to name and 
to imagine the objed of his religious feel- 

* I may refer to " Studies in Hegel's Philosophy 
of Religion," Chap. IV,, for a fuller and Bome- 
what varied statement and criticism of this 
ond pha 



54 BE AS OX AND AUTHORITY 

ing. The activity in this sphere is that of 
imagination. It is what we may call men- 
tal art— picture-thinking- taking the place 
of picture-making. It is thought raising 
us out of sense. Here the object and the 
content of the religious feeling appear 
in forms corresponding to the degree of 
culture possessed. The new wine is first 
put into old bottles and then new bottles 
are formed out of the fragments of the 
bursted old ones. This mental art of 
picture conceptions advances, bodying 
forth in less sensuous forms and in more 
abstract language the content of the re- 
ligious feeling they help to quicken. The 
savage indulges in rude sensuous art, or 
combines it with rude mental art, personi- 
fying earth, air and sky. The Christian 
child is met in this phase of activity with 
Christian names and symbols, which help 
him to higher conceptions of what he feels 
blindly stirring in his soul. They do not 
create, but only help develop his religious 
life in more rational form. The more 



IN RELIGION. 55 

abstract form of conception, i.e., dogma, 
is of little use here, unless it be accom- 
panied with parable, legend and narra- 
tive. It is the time that religion is nour- 
ished on narrative-metaphor. The Bible 
contains a good proportion of such food 
for the young, and Christian history, es- 
pecially in heroic and martyr days, fur- 
nishes more. But these should be supple- 
mented by current religious literature, 
comparable with that furnished our young 
people by St. Nicholas and The Youth's 
Companion, instead of the autumnal leaf- 
lets and childish Sunday-school books. 

By means of literature the Divine Educa- 
tor co-works in developing and strength- 
ening the bond between himself and the 
growing child. Such narrative-metaphors 
arc winged, and bear the young soul aloft 
to the very heart of God. It is the ver v 
sustenance lor which young souls are 
hungry, and mere catechetical instruction 

in abstract theology is the veriest chaff to 
chafe and wither their aspirations, unless 



56 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

it be judiciously concealed in fragrant 
flowers or ripe fruit. Give them the lus- 
cious grape, and not merely the seed. 

Along with this g'oes the religious nur- 
ture, through public worship, Church fes- 
tivals and ceremonies. The Christian 
3 7 ear, followed out as dramatically as possi- 
ble, is the best teacher of Christian truth. 
Besides, all this brings out the social side 
of religion, and helps to unite them with 
God through uniting with their fellows. 

The Catechetical and Dogmatic Period. 

The time for abstract conceptions will 
come soon enough. The analyzing and 
comparing and generalizing activity will 
begin its work in due time. Here meta- 
phors harden into fact or are generalized 
into dogma. The winged metaphor will 
be clipped. The seed of the ripe fruit will 
be sought. The soul will crave definite 
and systematic truth. Subjective feeling 
and its imaginative vesture must find 
a basis in " Church Doctrine and Bi- 



IN RELIGION, 57 

ble Truth." Much of the non-symbolic 
teaching given, it is true, represents the 
work of this same phase of the activity of 
thought in Church teachers. Systems of 
theology are often not much in advance of 
this period of abstract conception. 

How best to conceive God, and how best 
represent the essential religious relation 
in systematic form, is the question at this 
stage, as the earlier picture-form becomes 
more abstract. This is the time for positive 
catechetical instruction, mingled with suf- 
ficient persona] and rational persuasion to 
win assent. The proper ground of certi- 
tude here is a mingling of reason and au- 
thority. The authoritative teaching of 
the Church, properly presented, is God's 
method of further development of the bond 

between himself and his children. What 

great Christian teachers and what the 
Church in oecumenical councils have 
framed, come as the most vocal angels of 
the truth. 
Such teaching is the creation of the 



58 REASON AXD AUTHORITY 

Holy Spirit co-working with the com- 
munal spirit. It represents the best ex- 
pression of a large Christian consciousness 
through many centuries. It can and 
should be given with authority. Ground- 
ed upon the vital idea of religion, it has a 
rational authoritv to which every member, 
at this stage, will gladly and uncondition- 
ally submit. Such authoritative teaching 
is the craving of the soul, and so essential 
to its religious life. Here such authority 
nourishes and quickens the religious life 
of the member, and submerges his in- 
dividual conceits by giving him the one 
Lord, one faith and one baptism of the 
Universal Church. It is the time to go to 
school ; the time when the mind era ves 
teachers and longs for the wisdom that is 
beyond it. It craves to know what it 
ought to believe. It believes spontaneous- 
ly on authority. It is also the time for 
Bible teaching, for Christian education 
through sacred literature. 

The Bible is the Church's record of the 



IN RELIGION. 59 

historical revelation upon which it is 
founded. It contains the word of God in 
all its forms of literature. It is also the 
vehicle of revelation to the inquiring* mind 
and longing heart. Protestants have made 
no mistake in reverting* to it as life-giving- 
and authoritative. It will continue to be 
both of these when the fullest and freest 
Biblical criticism shall have done its his- 
torical, psychological and literary work 
upon it. It will be found to yield a much 
more wholesome authority than under its 
uncriticised form of infallibility. 

Many may stop contented with imagina- 
tion on the standpoint of Church services, 
with their symbolism and ceremonial ob- 
servances. Others, less aesthetic, slop on 
the more abstract form of dogma, or or- 
thodox belief. Vulgar Romanism and 
Orthodoxy illustrate these two phases of 

Conception, Of sensuous and mental idola- 
try, hot ii of which are normal phases in the 

religious process. 



60 BE AS ON AND AUTHORITY 

(b.) Reflection, Criticism and Doubt. 

The period of reflection. Reflection, in- 
deed, forms a part of the activity which 
receives and forms definite religious con- 
ceptions and right belief. But it does not 
stop here. The normal activity of this 
phase impels on to a criticism of tradition- 
al and current conceptions on its way to a 
comj)rehension of the necessity of religion 
and an estimate of their comparative worth 
and real validity. Perfect representation 
or conception of God is intrinsically impos- 
sible, either in the form of pictured or of ab- 
stract symbol. Thought, in seeking this, 
has abstracted the essence of all its sym- 
bols or precipitated them into definite and 
logical forms, and annexed reasons thereto. 
The reflective activity now impels to an 
examination of these forms, and of the rea- 
sons alleged for them. It is essentially 
critical and inevitably skeptical It real- 
izes the limitations and contradictions of 
attained conceptions. It then seeks to 



IN RELIGION. 61 

vindicate them b3 T rationalistic investi- 
gations and evidences, only to multiply 
doubts. 

Saintly Doubt. 

This is a necessary phase in the life of 
every ingenuously thoughtful Christian 
and Church. It is the work of the spirit 
criticising its own inadequate creation. It 
is the normal activit3 r of the human spirit 
responsive to new revelations from the 
Divine Spirit. It is not an alien force, but 
the implicit infinite energizing through 
and above the inadequate forms of its 
hitherto realization in the finite spirit. 
Such ci-it icism is the normal activity of the 
growing human spirit responsive to the 
Divine Spirit's new revelation, of which it 
may scarcely he conscious. The advOCatus 
diaboli cannol prevent the canonization of 
such temporary d6ub1 as sane and saintly. 
Dogma tnaking and dogma sustaining, 
straining, breaking and re-formation are 
all the normal work of I he same phase of 

thought, as understanding, on its way to 



62 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

the comprehension of the concrete ration- 
ality of catholic S3 T mbols. It must reflect 
upon the various musts which have 
Hitherto been controlling'. It is the in- 
herently just and normal demand of the 
human spirit to know the source and 
ground of these musts ; to find a rationale 
of the authority of Bible, Church and 
reason. 

The authority of Bible and Church 
may be rudely questioned by the rea- 
son that finally questions itself. Its aim 
is to see what it is in them that makes 
the Bible, Church and reason worthy au- 
thorities. Much of this criticism is directed 
against accidental, temporary and local 
conceptions of Christianity, which are in- 
herently false to its spirit and purpose. It 
is the attempt to reconceive Christ under 
the changed conditions of modern science 
and thought. This task of reformation is 
laid upon many Christians and many age;-. 
What we call revivals and reformations 
are only more emphatic workings of this 



IN RELIGION. 63 

spirit in the Christian community. It is 
the dynamic of the Christian Zeitgeist 
itself impelling* to more comprehensive and 
vital knowledge of Christ, and should lead, 
on the one hand, to the throwing aside the 
accumulated rubbish of other periods, and, 
on the other hand, to the recovering and 
holding fast all that is good in previous 
forms of Christianity. From the mother's 
knee to the grave, from Bethlehem to the 
New Jerusalem, the Christian man and 
Church have this reflective, critical task 
to perform, in order to advance in Chris- 
tian knowledge and life. It is a process of 
negating truth by affirming fuller truth. 

Half of current scepticism comes from 
the pressing upon this generation outgrown 
conceptions and imperfect developments of 
the gospel. To acknowledge frankly the 
necessary imperfection of progress is not 
to detract from the gospel, bu1 is to take 
away the edge of half the criticism. To 
attempt a readjustment of the letter to 
the spirit of Christianity; to reconceive 



64 BE AS OX AXD A UTHORITY 

Christianity, if you will, in terms of modern 
thought and imagery ; to put the spirit in 
new forms : to abrogate the old letter in 
its fulfilment in the new — something like 
this is the problem set for the defender of 
the faith to-day. To acknowledge that 
Christianity has often been bound up with 
false views of science, history, philosophy 
and politics, and with poor mechanical 
views of God, the world and man, and 
that to-day we are trying to free the spirit 
from these limitations and from the letter 
of theological and ecclesiastical dogmatism 
with which it has been unduly hampered, 
is to win sympathetic hearing and help, 
when otherwise we would meet with no 
vital response. 

When this critical activity is abstract, it- 
busies itself with finding grounds or rea- 
sons pro and con. It takes Christianity 
out of its concrete process and treats it ab- 
stractly as chiefly logical definitions. It- 
proves and disproves and generally ends, 
unless it becomes concrete, in that negative 
form which should only be a mid station* 



IN RELIGION. 65 

This abstract criticism is known as that of 
common rationalism. The Aufklaerung , 
£claircissement and Rationalism were 
the three national forms of the "age of 
reason." The eighteenth centurj 7 should 
have sufficed for this narrow sort of mental 
work, and the nineteenth century should 
have gone on with the affirmative pro- 
cess. But it continues in its senile form 
of agnosticism. It has ultimately doubted 
itself as the organ of truth. Not much 
lias been lost by this last stage, for its 
most positive result was a form of natural 
religion, or Deism, which dried up the rich 
fountain of spiritual life, having a God 
who was little better than " a frost-bitten 
reality." 

Sinful Doubt. 

11 is only when the spirit's activity d roops 
and stops its work at this abstract nega- 
tive stage, thai doubl can be called sinful. 
It is then putting the absolute emphasis 
on subjective reason. It is then non- 
huuian, non-rational, a violation of the 



66 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

binding- relation between God and. man 

through historical and social media. Such 

absolute negativity of subjectivism is the 

very essence of the devil. No one is more 

to be pitied and no one is more to be 

dreaded than the man who has stuck fast 

in the mire of this standpoint. The truly 

human cries out, 

" Great God, I'd rather be 
A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn ! " 

It is the natural penalty of thought ab- 
stracted from action and institution. It is 
the penalty of holding to Christianity as 
chiefly logical doctrine. For belief is 
rarely the outcome of formal logical pro- 
cedure. Concrete Christianity is also 
Catholicism, as well as orthodoxy and 
Protestantism, The East and the West 
and the New West are only elements of 
its organic life. Attempts to vindicate 
an\ r of these, abstracted from the whole, 
necessarily lead to doubt and disbelief. 

JEaith, as the Ground of much SkejJticism. 
Much of the prevalent skepticism, how- 



IN RELIGION. 67 

ever, is earnest, serious, wistful, and not 
Mephistophelian. It is within the Church 
in which its martyrs have been nurtured. 
It is normal. Puritanism, in its day, and 
Anglo-Catholicism both doubted, protested 
and deformed as well as reformed the con- 
temporaiy forms of faith and life. They 
appealed from a present to a higher con- 
ception of Christianity. The New Theol- 
ogy is but another illustration of the same 
activity. Faith is at the bottom of such 
work. It is the outworking of a higher 
conception of Christianity in the common 
Christian consciousness. The real ground 
<>i' criticism is here the real ground of cer- 
titude in tli is transit ion epoch. It is faith's 
apprehension of a deeper and Larger 
revelation breaking forth from fettered 
Bible, Church and reason. It is the spirit 
Degating in order to reform its inadequate 
conceptions often, indeed, only an efforl 
to understand, that it may hold with 
stronger conviction its catholic heritage. 
In tins is seen the infinite cunning of the 



68 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

guiding Spirit in spiritually minded men 
and in the Christian community. It is 

letting- doubt have its way while using- it 
as an instrument to accomplish higher 
aims. The normal end of such doubt is a 
comprehension of the natural and persist- 
ent co-relation and co-working* of the 
Divine and human spirit in historic pro- 
cess, which explains and vindicates at 
comparative worth all previous concep- 
tions and institutions. 

Religious Knowledge Conditioned by the 
Incarnation. 

This can, from the nature of the case, 
now come only from a genuine compre- 
hension of the fact of the Incarnation and 
its historic effect in life, thought and insti- 
tution. The religion o the Incarnation is 
the concrete form of reason that meets and 
fulfils the outworn abstract reason of this 
stage. It is born into a comprehension of 
that which is. Having proved to its satis- 
faction in agnosticism that its own sub- 
jective ideals were not rational, it turns to 



IN RELIGION. 69 

the real to find the concrete objective 
rational. If it arrives (at a comprehensive 
view) at a philosophy of history at all, it 
must find in the religion of the Incarna- 
tion the ripest and ultimate form of 
rationality. With Aristotle philosophy 
was a thoughtful comprehension of the 
encyclopaedia of Greek life and experience ; 
with Hegel it was the same speculative 
comprehension of the concrete experience 
of Christendom. That is the ohjective 
matter of this phase of the activity of 
thought which we have called 

(c.) Comjtrehension, the highest form of 
knowing. 

We are chiefly concerned now with the 
mode of its activity, rather than with its 
contents. Its mode is that of insight, 
system, of correlation of all relativities 
into a self-related organic process. It is 
philosophy looking behind and before all 
previous ph uses and comprehending them 
as vital elements of a totality. It is con- 



70 EEASON AND AUTHORITY 

Crete experience taking full account of 
itself, winging its flight from both earthly 
and airjr abstractions. It is the incoming 
of the tidal wave, to flood the little pools 
left here and there, and to restore their 
continuity with the great ocean. It is an 
overcoming of previous standpoints in one 
that correlates and embraces them all in 
a system which is self-related. It rises 
to the conception of the necessity of self- 
consciousness, which is perfect freedom. 
The heart of this system is the primal, 
persistent and vital bond between God 
and man, or religion. The result of its 
activity, as I have said, is conditioned by 
its subject-matter to-day. That subject- 
matter is the religion of the Incarnation ; 
and philosophy only reaches its ultimate 
insight by a comprehension of that which 
is. 

With many Christian thinkers the ac- 
tivity of the spirit does not persist unto 
this goal, where the wounds of reason are 
healed by reason; where the ground of 



IN RELIGION. 71 

authority is self-contained and self-neces- 
sitated through a profound synthesis of 
them all. Either dogma or doubt catches 
and holds them. They remain in either 
one or the other of these phases of com- 
mon rationalism. And yet the spirit's 
demand and possibility is to make this 
ein ueberwundener Standpunkt. Often 
it is only implicitly overcome. It is over- 
come in that vital act of faith which we 
may call abbreviated knowledge. It is 
overcome practically, but not in the way 
of thoughl . 

The Function of Philosophy. 

Philosophy is only t he making explicit 
for thought what is contained in the ordi- 
nary Christian consciousness; only seeing 
the necessity of the real freedom in (lod's 

service; the realization of the bond be- 
tween God and man contained in the 
Consciousness of pardon, peace and com- 
munion wit h ( okI t hrough t he incarnate 

Word. It is 1 he discos erv o\' t he logic 



72 REASON AXD AUTHORITY 

of the Logo* in Christian experience and 
history. It accepts Christianity as the 
manifestation, the positive form of the 
absolute religion, affirming- in its doctrine 
of the incarnation the essential kinship of 
the human with the Divine Spirit. It is 
the only thing that will save those who 
have passed into the critical, doubting 
stage, from either a hopeless skepticism 
or an arbitrary submission to a non- 
mtelligent power, which is the essence of 
superstition. 

Unsophisticated piety has no need of 
this. But how little of current religion 
is unsophisticated. How thoroughly the 
rationalism of the understanding has laid 
hold upon the majority of Christians, They 
are asking and seeking earnestly for rea- 
sons for their religion. Current apologet- 
ics, or external reasons, may temporarily 
satisfy many. But their inadequacy is 
also keenly realized by many others. 
They demand a sufficient reason, an ade- 
quate First Principle, which validates all 



IN RELIGION. 73 

proofs and authorities. Reflection, or the 
mere reasoning- of the understanding*, is 
incapable of reaching this. The only ques- 
tion then is, whether thought shall and 
can persist to its fruition, or whether the 
spirit shall faint in hopeless ag-nosticism, 
offering itself an unworthy sacrifice to 
either doubt or dogma. But here we 
must not neglect the value of the practi- 
cal reason, the demand for religion in our 
nature, and the adequacy of current forms 
to meet this demand. We shall find that 
the theoretical can never reach its con- 
vincing result without inclusion of the 
practical reason. 

In this work thought passes in appre- 
ciative critical review all the categories 
which it has hitherto used in rationalizing 
experience, impelled onward to an abso- 
lute First Principle which will include and 
explain Ihem all; that is, it seeks I'ov a 

self-related and self-relating system, ()v 

a science of forms of thought, some of 

winch Theology, as well as Science, uses 



74 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

in its work. It is restless till it rests in a 
sufficient First Principle, adequate to ex- 
plain all experience. Being, substance, 
force, cause, co-relation, external finality, 
an extra-mundane Deity arbitrarily cre- 
ating and destroying, are categories which, 
when used as first principles, give rise to 
positivism, pantheism, idealism, deism 
and agnosticism. But concrete religious 
experience to-day is such as to render all 
such interpretations inadequate. The ab- 
stract supernaturalism of much theology, 
as well as abstract mechanical natural- 
ism, has failed to reach the adequate con- 
ception of God which makes creation, 
the incarnation and restoration possible. 
Thought is restless beyond these concep- 
tions till it reaches the thought of an 
Absolute Self -consciousness who manifests 
himself creatively in the finite world and 
man, binding them back to himself. It 
declines any conception which makes na- 
ture, man and God to be discordant and 
irreconcilable ideas. It is especially con- 



IN RELIGION. 75 

cerned to find the conception which binds 
man and God in the congenial bond which 
religion implies. Beginning- with the in- 
dividual finite mind, it passes through all 
the encompassing social circles, finding in 
the highest no place for "the religion of 
humanity." Religion demands a bond 
with a super-humanity. 

Beginning with the conception of an 
abstract supra-mundane Deity, it passes 
through all theories of creation till it 
reaches the concept ion of the concrete ab- 
solute Self-consciousness that must create, 
and realize himself in his offspring, Ab- 
stract mechanical necessity, of course, is 
here entirely out of the question. It is 
the \'\-r^ necessity of his own concrete 
triune Personality which Leads to creation 
and its culmination in the Incarnation. 
Such a Kirsl Principle contains in its very 
nature organic bond with his offspring. 

The Necessity of Religious Certitude. 

And in t he light of this alone is finite 



76 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

spirit, its nature, history and destiny, in- 
telligible. Here religion is seen to be 
necessary. Its elements of revelation and 
faith are in the reciprocal process of the 
Divine Spirit to the human, and of the 
human spirit to the divine. 

Philosophy does not create this concep- 
tion of the First Principle out of nothing*. 
It is not an abstract a priori conception. 
It is the logical ultimate and the chrono- 
logical presupposition of all the other cate- 
gories under which experience is alone 
possible for man. These categories or 
conditions of thinking can only be found 
by reflection upon actual experience. Phi- 
losophy is simply the science of these cate- 
gories, implicit in the experience even of 
the most unreflecting, some of them be- 
coming more explicit in the special sciences. 
It is not a knowledge of all things, but a 
comprehension of the underlying condi- 
tions of all knowledge in a system with an 
adequate concrete generic First Principle. 
Here its special insight is directed to the 



IN RELIGION. 77 

theological conditions of religious experi- 
ence, or, in particular, of the content of 
the Christian consciousness as to sin and 
redemption, or of alienated and of restored 
communion (religion) with God through 
Jesus Christ. In other words, it aims at 
comprehensive insight into the rationality 
of Christian experience, or at philosophi- 
cal theology founded upon historical and 
dogmatic theology. 

It does not destroy or transcend relig- 
ion, which is the most vital realization of 
the bond between God and man. Religion 
is the highest, the complete practical, re- 
conciliation, and is not destined to lose it- 
self in philosophy. Philosophy docs not 
set itself above religion, but only above 
partial and conflicting interpretations of 
experience. It leads us to know tor 
thought and in thought, as reasonable and 
true and holy, whal religion is as life and 
experience. It validates this experience 
for thought. It gives the highest author- 
ity to religion, by demonstrating its abeo- 



78 BE AS ON AND AUTHORITY 

lute necessity. It reaches the ultimate 
ground of certitude, which was only im- 
plicit and unthought of in the stage of 

feeling. 

Philosophy of History. 

It reaches, too, certitude as to objec- 
tive religion. It sees the necessity and 
worth of all creeds and institutions as 
the outcome of the religious bond — the 
work of the spirit of man inspired by the 
Spirit of God in a course of divine educa- 
tion of the race. This spirit of compre- 
hension is never envious. It often roman- 
ticizes, growing tender and reverent in its 
appreciation of the forms of the earlier 
stages in which it has been nourished. If 
it has passed thoroughly through the 
skeptical stage, it can never be ungener- 
ous in its estimate of either dogma or doubt. 
Its insight into the truth of the heart of 
all religion ; its ripe conviction of the neces- 
sary organic communion of God and man ; 
its comprehension of the process of the 
Divine Education, or its philosophy of 



IN RELIGION. 

history, enables it to find itself, to make 
itself at home at the humblest domestic 
altar as well as in the grandest cathedral, 
always holding the critical faculty in abey- 
ance, as having been satisfied once for all. 
It thus gives the highest authority in re- 
ligion, as deduced from and implied in 
itself, as necessary. Holy and reverent is 
this spirit of insight, for it is the very 
Spirit of God which lias bound the devil 
of doubt — a 

" Part of that power, not understood, 
Which always wills the bad, and always works 
the good." 

Philosophy of Religion, 

It does not place itself above religion. 
again, because it is the child of religion. 
[t reaches its conception of Mod only be- 
cause religion has already realized the 
essential bond between God and man. In 
particular, it is the child of Christianity — 
the thoughtful comprehension of its own 
experience. This starts from the culrai- 



80 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

nation of the historical manifestation of 
the bond between God and man. Jesus 
Christ manifested this bond perfectly. He 
was a man manifesting^ perfect absolute 
union with God. Rational truth can 
only be apprehended on condition of its 
existence in natural and secular form. It 
must be immanent in a historical process. 
The man Jesus did not primarily appeal 
to thought. He lived his practical life in 
the world. He came unto his own, and 
won them by his life. He became the ful- 
filment of the supernatural order implicit 
in all previous history, the consummation 
of the self -necessitated Divine act of crea- 
tion in time. Here the hitherto immanent 
and constitutional co- working of God with 
man came to perfect manifestation. God 
became man because humanity was an 
essential phase of his own life. Here his 
perfect self-consciousness was manifested. 
Son of man and Son of God were manifest- 
ed as congenial and inherent parts of 
the Divine Self-consciousness. Here was 



IN REL1GI0X. 81 

reached the axis of the world's histor} 7 , or, 
for what concerns us at present, the axis 
of the world's thought about God and 
man ; for we are still abstracting the con- 
crete thought from the more concrete pro- 
cess of Christian life and institution. 

Modern Thought as Christian Thought. 

Christian thought, which is modern 
thought, starts from the sensuous life of 
Christ and continues following the secular 
extension of this life in humanity. This 
has been the woof of which thought lias 
been the warp in the concrete web of the 
modern world. Previous philosophy had 
been an attempted comprehension of the 
relation of God and man as manifested in 
human experience. With the advent of 
Christ came new and fuller experience. It 
did not appeal primarily to thought., The 
practical experience of this life and its ex- 
tension in the life of the Christian com- 
munity came first, Bui thinking i^> an 
inherent human necessity which continued 



82 BE AS ON AND A UTHORITY 

in the Christian community. It was self- 
necessitated to reflect upon and express in 
intellectual forms the content of its expe- 
rience. The thought activity was new 
only as modified by its subject matter. 
Thoughtful men, men trained in philoso- 
phy, became Christians, and Christians be- 
came thoughtful. Hence Christian doc- 
trines, and ultimately Christian creeds. 
These represent the most catholic thought 
of the intellectual aristocracy of the com- 
munity, thinking upon the content of 
catholic experience. Thej 7 claimed the 
guidance of the Holy Spirit gradually 
leading them into all truth. The Mcene 
symbol represents the highest and the 
most oecumenical expression of this cath- 
olic thought. This gives its authority to 
the completed Nicene symbol. 

Use of the Nicene Symbol. 

There are parts of this symbol which 
can have their proper authority only to 
those who can think themselves into its 



IN RELIGION. 83 

definitions and see how it states ultimate 
thought. Such thought should be the 
goal of all Christian thinking or theology. 
But all such knowledge is an approximate 
development toward, rather than an ac- 
tual attainment. In the highest specu- 
lative thought and in the most oecu- 
menical creed we still know only in part. 
But, for the understanding of the Nicene 
symbol, this speculative thought is neces- 
sary, as is also a knowledge of the whole 
history of the age which gave birth to it. 
Hence its general use in public worship is 
not to be desired. Repeating, parrot-like, 
forms of sound doctrine without any con- 
ception of their sense, is a pagan custom 
that we need not encourage. The Nicene 
symbol has its proper use in church-coun- 
cils and clerical meetings. But perhaps 
this would be too great a restriction. One 
can join with the great congregation of 
saints of the centuries in hymning this be- 
lief in the full divinity and the real man- 
hood of Jesus ( Ihrist. 



84 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

Non-OEcumenical Theology and Theo- 
ries. 

Our discussion implies a distinction be- 
tween what is authoritative for comprehen- 
sive thought, and the much larger part of 
dogma which consists of metaphorical con- 
ceptions, partial theories and inadequate 
definitions which are local and transient — 
at best, only truth in the making. It is 
this portion, too, about which much of 
the anxious thought and controversy and 
doubt of our day is concerned. To this 
part belong theories of the inspiration of 
the Bible, of the atonement, of future pun- 
ishment, of the method of the creation of 
nature and of man. Must I believe them ? 
Do we believe them ? Have they believed 
them ? If so, which one of them, and why ? 
Here the history of Christian doctrine can 
aid us greatly. It shows that none of these 
theories have passed through the oecumeni- 
cal work of comprehensive thought. 

To the doubting and harassed Christian 



IJS RELIGION. 85 

asking what must I believe as to many 
traditional and current conceptions, we 
ma3 T answer : Believe them only so far as, 
from a study of their history, you can see 
them to be necessary implications of the 
doctrine of the Incarnation. Take them 
at a relative rationality, as more or less 
harmonious with the general Christian 
sentiment. 

The Law of Liberty also the Law of 
Duty. 
The oecumenical creed is here a law of 
liberty. But it is also a law of duty. We 
not only may, but we must freely investi- 
gate the grounds and worth of all other 
conceptions. Biblical criticism and the 
theory of creation by evolution, the doc- 
t lines of the future life and of the atone- 
ment, the question of church polity and 
ritual, all are open questions, in the solu- 
tion of which we must take our part. The 
authoritative must is here that of fnv In- 
vestigation, instead of slavish submission. 



86 RE AS OX AXD AUTHORITY 

The "Mast" of the Bible. 

Protest autism repudiated the unethical 
authority of an unholy Church, but soon 
yielded the same sort of blind reverence 
to the Bible. The change was not wholly 
a mistake. It was the most spiritual and 
ethical attitude that could then be taken. 
The evil grew out of the abuse to which 
all good things are subject. Supersti- 
tion changed this living word into a dead 
letter. It was given the place assigned 
by pagans to their oracles, or by Moham- 
medans to the Koran. Bibliolatry be- 
came as real as Mariolatry. Orthodoxy 
was based upon a literal interpretation of 
an infallible oracle. Hence more than 
half the honest doubt of our day. Hence, 
too, the form of unevidencing evidences, 
serving only to increase skepticism. 

But there is a reformation rapidly tak- 
ing place in regard to the worth and au- 
thority of the Bible almost as great as 
that accomplished by the Reformation as 



IN RELIGION. 87 

to the authority of the Church. Only 
this is an intellectual, while that was a 
moral revolt. It may take generations 
to bring men generally to a recognition of 
the rightful spiritual authority of the 
Bible, as it has taken centuries to turn 
the tide of appreciation in favor of recog- 
nizing the rightful and necessary author- 
ity of the Church. 

Certainly it is not to be overlooked 
that a total revolution has taken place in 
our day in the conception of the method of 
revelation and inspiration. Our Bishops, 
in their late Pastoral Letter, acknowledge 
that the " advances made in Biblical re- 
search have added a hoty splendor to the 
crown of devout scholarship," and mention 
both " shrinking superstition and irrever- 
ent self-will" as earth-born clouds that 
tend to obscure its holy light. 

We can barelj r indicate the reformed 
conception of the Bible which is rapidly 
replacing the old one. 

The Bible is Literature. It is sacred 



88 RE AS ON AND A UTHORITY 

literature. It is the "survival of the 
fittest " of the sacred literature of the 
Jews and of the early Christians. Like 
the creeds, it is the product of the Church, 
and at the same time the fountain and the 
norm of Christian life and doctrine. It is 
a record of revelation done into history ; 
a record of the historical incarnation of the 
Son of God, set in a partial preparation 
for it, and in a partial result of its primi- 
tive extension. It thus contains God's 
revelation. It is a vehicle of that revela- 
tion. It is itself a revelation of God to 
the student of it, and to the whole Church. 
It is not errorless, or infallible, or of 
equal value throughout. It is the Book 
of the Church to the Church and for the 
Church. Hence the Christian conscious- 
ness, rather than individuals, is the best 
interpreter of it. It also, in turn, pro- 
duces and gives the norm of development 
to the life and doctrine of the Church. It 
is a living word, appealing to the mind 
and heart and conscience after criticism 
has done its utmost work upon it. 



IN RELIGION. 89 

We still have the Bible. The Bible, 
and the Bible only, is the Book of the 
Church, and the rule of faith. But we do 
not have — or we shall not, when critical 
stud}' shall have finished its work — a word- 
book of equally valuable proof -texts, in- 
fallible in toto et partibus. This crit- 
icism demonstrates that the Bible is 
a record of divine revelation done into 
human history under the limitations 
of the mental and religious culture of 
the people of current times. All parts 
are not of equal value. Christ himself 
and his apostles criticised the morality 
and ritual of the Old Testament. Our 
Gospels are a fourfold transcription of 
inspired teaching 1 in the Church of the first 
century. The Church was before the New 
Testament. It is the Church, founded 
and growing under the limitations of his- 
torical conditions, that gives us our au- 
thentic record of the life of Christ. But 
this is by no means to adopt the Roman 
Catholic mot hod of setting the Church 



90 BE AS ON AND A UTHORITY 

above the Bible. For it, in turn, is that 
to which the Church confesses itself bound 
to appeal to as the rule of faith. Good 
Churchmen now generally say that the 
orthodox view of the Bible as a verbally 
infallible text-book has never been a 
doctrine of the Catholic Church. I be- 
lieve that Apologetics should frankly con- 
cede this, and thus free Christianity from 
the hundred criticisms that have force 
only as against such a theory — none what- 
ever against the Bible as the Book of 

books. 

Open Questions. 

So as to liberty and duty in regard to 
other open questions. The greatest theo- 
logians of Christendom have always main- 
tained this. Only zealots and party poli- 
ticians have flourished an authoritative 
must over Christians in such questions. 
But this duty demands that we shall try to 
get at the heart, at the real significance of 
such conceptions and theories ; to modest- 
\y seek to understand them before we dare 



IN XELIGION. 91 

call th£m irrational^ after the short and 
easy method of many self-styled rational- 
ists. Indeed, the historical method has 
largely replaced this negative rationalistic 
method even with unbelievers. They, too, 
thus find a relative justification for what 
they reject.* This much, at least, is com- 
pelled by the incoming appreciation of 
social and historical factors of individuals. 
One can only know through others, and ul- 
timatelj 7 the whole only through individ- 
uals. Thus historical and dogmatic the- 
ology furnish the necessary materials for 
philosophic theology. It remains true, 
however, that we can even thus only accept 
many traditional conceptions and dogmas 
in a Pickwickian sense. Our belief in them 
will accord with Bishop Pearson's curi- 
ously elliptical definition of belief as " the 
assent, to that which is credible as credi- 

* A very fine example of the historical study o( 
dogma may be found in an article by Prof. (\ 0. 
ett, I). I)., on M The Natural History of Dog- 
ma." The Forum, Dec., 1889. 



92 . REASON AND AUTHORITY 

ble " — i.e., belief is belief in that which 
is believable as believable. 

But here we are still in the sphere of 
the liberty and duty of criticising inade- 
quate metaphors and opinions. The task 
is how best to conceive or re-conceive 
Christianity through aid of past concep- 
tions, and also through the aid of the 
changed conceptions furnished by mod- 
ern science and culture. We cannot be 
chained to winged or to petrified meta- 
phors of a past, whose whole material for 
imagination was very different from that 
of our times. We cannot accept them as 
authoritative, but must create the best we 
can, which will be as congenially authori- 
tative to us as theirs were to them. More 
cannot be demanded. The modern ideal 
of knowledge is drawn on the canvas of a 
progressive education of the race. It is 
in accordance with this ideal that the 
most authoritative truth for one people or 
age may have but relative validity for 
another. Nor should the value of meta- 



IN RELIGION. 93 

phor and abstract dogma as media of the 
divine revelation be overlooked in this 
criticism of their worth as scientific knowl- 
edge. Only we must not seek in them 
ultimate ground of authority. As we pass 
through self-compelled criticism from one 
conception to another, we are finding our 
real ground to be "the unity of identity 
and difference/' of dogma and doubt. 
The new is better than the old only as it 
contains the old as a vital, though trans- 
muted, element. 

Inadequacy of Mere Theoretical Knowl- 
edge. 
But even in the most concrete historical 
and philosophic view of truth we are still 
too abstract. We are studying Chris- 
tianity as if it were chiefly a system of 
intellectual truth. We are abstracting 
the web from the woof, the Logos of the 
incarnation from the whole of its practical 
extension. We have acknowledged thai 
Christianity must be done into history, 



94 REASON AND A UTHORITY 

into concrete life and institution, before it 
could be seen to be reason, just as the 
earthly life of Christ was essential to the 
seeing him as the Logos. Philosophy, 
then, must revert to this. Christianity is 
more than feeling or thinking. It is also 
deed. Theoretical cognition is not suffi- 
cient. 

" Grey, friend, is all theory ; green 

Is the golden tree of life." 



PART III. 

RELIGION AS WILLING. 

We have, then, to notice the third form 
in which religion manifests itself — that of 
willing. 

Comprehension has to embrace not only 
the grey form of right thinking, but also 
the green tree of golden fruit — the exten- 
sion of the incarnation in the practical life 
of the social body. Religion is not merely 
the feeling or seeing the bond between 
God and man ; it is also the determination 



IN RELIGION. 95 

of life by the bond. It is willing to be 
God-like. This is the building power, the 
realizing of the extension of the incarna- 
tion to the sanctifying the whole of secu- 
lar life. It is the Rome-element con- 
stantly accompan3 7 ing or preceding the 
other phases of religion. It posits, puts 
in concrete form the certitude of both 
feeling and thought. It is founded upon 
the rock of secular reality. It w r as pres- 
ent at the giving of the Law upon Sinai, in 
the formation of the Jewish Theocracy and 
building its temple, as it w r as in Rome be- 
coming the imperial mistress of the secular 
world. This bed-rock certitude has never 
left itself without a witness and an organ 
in the form of institutions which have 
been the media of all our culture. This 
lias been the activity of what Kant called 
the "Practical Reason" or creative rea- 
son moulding the concrete into accord- 
ance with its norm. It does the truth, 
and thus creates the forms which in turn 
nourish and educate it . 



96 RE AS OX AXD AUTHORITY 

This Bome-eJement Records Its C 

in Its Deed. 

This Rome-element, :: the " Practical 
Reason, is eterna" - lacing its -":' 

- _ -: : Qg history, 

but always vindicating pas: hist : i y by the 
which that | ist ne makes possible. 
It may be called the petrifying el oment of 
religion. It catches and fixes in progres- 
sive stationary form the fleeting phase of 
feeling and the restless dialectic of thought . 
and yet ever uses the new and more am- 
ple materials they furnish for its w 

Man does what he thinks. Man thinks 
: he does. Man is what he does. 
If we were impelled to choose between 
7 :: these abstractions, we should 
say. Man is what he does. The will is 
the man. It is the concrete nnity of all 
the elements of man. Any act of will 
is the expression of the whole man as he 
is at that time. It is his character, his 
law. his authority, his certitude. Doing. 



IN RELIGION. 97 

he is ever organizing* his self, and ever 
rising on stepping-stones of past deeds to 
higher ones. Doing, he knows the doc- 
trine of God. 

The Moral Argument for Christianity. 

But man is social, and pre-eminently so 
in religion. The kingdom of heaven on 
earth has from the first been a social com- 
munity. Its deed is its real creed. Hence 
the worth of what is called the moral 
argument for Christianity — its visible 
power in regenerating and softening man- 
kind beyond all disquisitions of philoso- 
phers and all exhortations of moralists. 
This is also the truth in the argument that 
Christianity is a life of God in the soul of 
man, rather than a creed ; an immanent're- 
generative power, a mystical presence that 
moves the homesick soul to find its home 
in God in the ordinary routine of secular 
life. This too is thetruth in the argument 
From personal experience of the members 
of tliis social body, Christianity finds 



98 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

them, meets their religious needs, nourish- 
es their spiritual life, proves its adequacy 
to human need in all joyful and trying ex- 
periences. Its conceptions of life, of duty, 
of forgiveness, of eternal life — all the deep- 
er moral and religious needs of the human 
heart — are met in the presentation of the 
Gospel by the Church to its members. 
This social religion is a religion of both 
inspiration and consolation. The Church 
meets and incorporates the new-born babe 
into its motherly bosom in holy baptism. 
Throughout life it lifts up its perpetual 
eucharist to meet his needs, whether he be 
crying Be Profundis or shouting In Ex- 
celsis. At death it transfers him from 
the home below to the home above — from 
the Church militant to the Church trium- 
phant. The certitude of these blessings 
comes from experiencing them. It is the 
deed of Christ's life in the members of his 
social body. 



IN RELIGION. 99 

Instituted Christianity — the Kingdom 
of God. 
But Christianity does not only realize 
itself in the practical life of its members, 
it also institutes itself in social organiza- 
tion. Here we approach perilous ground, 
or rather, we have to sail between the 
Scylla of an abstract universal and an ab- 
stract individual conception of the Church. 
What is the form of the Holy Catholic 
Church in which all Christians believe ? 
We would fain escape from the strife 
of tongues by calling instituted Chris- 
tianity the kingdom or the republic of 
God — the communion of saints on earth. 
That is the comprehensive truth. We 
limit ourselves to a few expository state- 
ments. 

Mechanical and Ethical Conceptions of 
the Church. 
Our conception of the Church depends 

upon our conception of t ho First Principle. 

LofG 



100 BE AS ON AND A UTHOR1TY 

If God is conceived as abstract transcend- 
ence, the whole of religion necessarily re- 
ceives a semi-mechanical form. Tran- 
scendence implies a dualism, a gulf, rather 
than a bond between God and man, that 
can only be bridged in a mechanical way. 
The incarnation and its extension alike 
suffer from this partial conception of God. 
Romanism is the standing illustration of 
the form of institution realized under this 
conception. High- Anglicanism is bat its 
feebler counterfeit. This form has had, 
and still has, in some phases of civilization, 
its worth and relative justification. But 
to-day it is under the more genial con- 
genial conception of the Divine immanence 
that we get the most comprehensive view 
of the kingdom of God as the whole of the 
faithful in every form of instituted Chris- 
tianity. 

The Church and the State. 

There is no universal external corporate 
form that is inclusive. The Hoty Catholic 



IN RELIGION. 101 

Church is like the Universal State, that fed- 
eration of nations and Parliament of man 
to which individual states are subordinate 
and organic, and which is the world's tri- 
bunal, to pronounce and execute judgment 
upon them. Though constitutional mon- 
archy and Episcopacy be essential to the 
total corporate organization of Church and 
State, yet 6i one must needs be stone-blind 
not to see churches " and states standing 
without them to-da}^. The immanent 
Spirit was present in earlier forms, and 
now He is present in modern forms of 
Church and State, which have been inex- 
tricably interwoven throughout history. 
Protestant communions are also forms of 
instituted Christianity, close! y in sym- 
pathy with modern states, which base 
their constitutions on the principles of free- 
dom and respect for personality. Protes- 
tants necessarily regard the question of 
policy or constitution # from a different 

point- of view from t hat of Romanists, ll 

is not an article of faith with them. The 



102 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

Romanist conceives of instituted Chris- 
tianity as a mechanical, unethical form of 
authority. We recognize its institution 
as an ethical and historical process of the 
spirit immanent in Christian nations and 
communities. This springs from our con- 
ception of the First Principle as concrete 
Self-Consciousness, or Love, self-necessi- 
tated to create, and to relate himself to 
his created offspring. It is a part of the 
philosophy of history which is quite mod- 
ern, and yet Christian. 

Greek, Roman and Germanic Elements 
in Modern Christianity. 
Romanism is one phase of this process. 
But modern Christendom has passed be- 
yond Rome as ultimate. It is largely 
Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon. Still it is only 
a part of a process which must conserve 
the Greek and Roman element. The 
Greek element stands for philosophy or 
orthodoxy, the Roman for law or polity, 
and the Anglo-Saxon for free spirit or 



IN RELIGION. 103 

ethical personality. Creed and polity are 
permanent elements which Protestantism 
must conserve with its free spirit, without 
being seduced back to the stagnant ortho- 
doxy of the Greek Church or to the terrible 
tyranny of Roman ecclesiasticism. This 
is our task. It has its dangers, but it is 
a duty. The outworkings of the immanent 
spirit in our times indicate this trend of 
progress. The Christian consciousness is 
not content with so many Protestant vari- 
ations. It yearns for unity. 

We are still in the sphere of history in 
the making, but take our part in it under 
the conception of the Divine immanence. 
This conception is monistic and organic. 
It is the category of comprehension or of 
totality, self-active and self-realizing. Its 
chief danger is that of overlooking differ- 
ences, instead of reducing them to organic 
elements. Bu1 it is the conception which 
Steers Clear of all subjective individualism, 
and is only consistent with the social view 
of man in all spheres. 



104 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

The Christian Consciousness and 
Authority. 

Thus it finds its ground of author^ 
in the communal Christian consciousness, 
and strives to make this as oecumenical 
as possible. There are always relatively 
catholic orthodoxies, cults and institu- 
tions. These have been formative of every 
Christian person. Only in and through 
life in some form of them has he become 
a Christian. They have been God-given 
conditions to limit, in order to educe and 
realize, the individual. To be a member 
of some form of instituted Christianity is 
essential to one's being able to appreciate 
its rational^. It is from within such 
nurture that doubt may come to force him 
to wider conceptions or more catholic fel- 
lowship. Authority after authority, as 
teacher after teacher, may be transcended 
on the way to higher thought and life. 
But it must always be within some con- 
crete form of the Christian consciousness 



IN RELIGION. 105 

that the authority arid rationality of 
Christianity can be seen, on the way to 
comprehension and catholicity. The ap- 
prehension of its rationality comes after 
the experience of having* our best-self 
educed by the process. The larger our 
fellowship, the larger authority and ration- 
ality we shall be able to recognize in this 
conditioning Christian consciousness. 

Instituted Christianity needs and can 
have no grounds or evidence strictly exter- 
nal. It vindicates itself, as all organisms 
do. For comprehension, it is reason done 
into institution, the sum total of the out- 
come of the consciousness of the vital bond 
between God and man in historic process. 
Religion to-day stands for the recognition 
of the Fatherhood of God and the sonship 
of social man, till we all come unto a per- 
fecl manhood. The Church in every form 
is a partial organization of this recogni- 
tion. Submission to its authority in the 

most catholic form is the rational submer- 
gence of our empty Individualism in the 



106 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

whole historic life of the great brother- 
hood. This yielding is neither childlike 
faith nor unmanly superstition. It is the 
yielding that should come from compre- 
hensive insight into the vital and constitu- 
tive relation of a concrete whole to the 
single member, subjective religion being 
rendered possible only within such a pro- 
cess. The historical is seen to be the con- 
stant accompaniment and educer of the 
psychological form of our faith, while both 
rest upon the metaphysical ground of the 
Divine adhesion to his own offspring in a 
course of education into full sonship. 

To think ourselves into the creed, to form 
ourselves into the manners, to feel our- 
selves into the worship of the Church, is 
our highest rational duty. Such rational 
submission implies constant self-activity. 
This implies much doubt and much self- 
restraint. Hence it is vastly different 
from that servile, superstitious yielding to 
dogmatic external authority that rational 



IN RELIGION, 107 

Christians will never cease to protest 
against as uncatholic. 

Self -Consciousness and Certitude. 

A person must always be at home with 
himself in the content of his self -conscious- 
ness in order to be rational. The creed 
and cult of the Church must be adopted 
and self-imposed through recognition of 
their constitutive influence in his own de- 
velopment. But this development he 
knows can never be in isolation. The ra- 
tional for him is the social He lives and 
moves and has his being in and through 
social relations. The rational " I believe " 
thus rests psj^chologically and historically 
upon a a we believe." The rational u we 
believe " rests upon the Christian con- 
sciousness of the community of which we 
are organic members. This consciousness 
rests upon the primal and perennial vital 
bond of God with his offspring. Thus the 
ultimate ground" of authority and of eer- 



108 REASON AND AUTHORITY. 

titude is God's adhesion to man. The 
secondary, or mediating- ground of certi- 
tude for the individual, is the Church, 
which represents the adhesion of man, to 
God, through consciousness of this bond, 



CHAPTER II. 

AUTHORITY IN RELIGION* 



Two Notable Books on Authority in 
Religion. 

The two great books in the English re- 
ligious world this year are Dr. Martin- 
eau's Seat of Authority in Religion and 
the new "Essays and Reviews/' entitled 
"Lux Mundi. ' ' They are both apologetical 
— the one for a minimized individual Chris- 
tian^, the other for the concrete current 
of historical and institutional Christianity. 
They are both alike, too, in that their 
authors have read, marked, learned and 
inwardly digested the theological bugbear 

•"Lux Mundir John W. Lovell & Co., New 
York. "The Seat of Authority in Religion," 
by James Martineau, D.D., LL.D. Longmans 
Green & Co., Loudon and New York. 



110 RE AS OX AXD AUTHORITY 

of German criticism. They are both also 
rationalistic, aiming as they do at estab- 
lishing the rationality of t th which 
they contend for. however great the vari- 
ance between the contents of the faith in 
the two cases. But as regards the organ 
for interpreting Christianity, both ac- 
knowledge no diviner faculty than rea 
They differ, too, but little in their empha- 
sis rboth faith and reason. They differ 
immensely, however, in the qua 
" The Faith " found to be rational, and in 
their conception of the rational. 

Tne first volume is a painful surprise, on 
account of its minimum of content ; the 
other is a pleasurable surprise, on ac- 
count of its maximum of rationalism, in 
the best sense of the word. The broad be- 
comes narrow and the narrow broad. Dr. 
Martineau. who, on his recent eighty-fifth 
birthday, received an ovation from the 
great and good of all creeds and classes in 
England, because of his noble " endeavors 
after the Christian life." here narrows the 






IN RELIGION. Ill 

external concrete manifestation of Christi- 
anity to scarcely more than a half-hidden 
rivulet in noxious glades and arid deserts. 
The Anglo-Catholic movement, on the 
other hand/ which has hitherto stood for 
appeal to uncriticised authority of a past, 
arbitrarily labelled holy ; which has only 
spoken of reason with fear and hatred ; 
which has narrowed the limits of the 
Church more than an} r Puritan ; 3-es, the 
Oxford movement of Puse\ T and Newman 
here appears as not only offering but beg- 
ging to appeal to reason, in order to justi- 
fy itself to the times in which it lives. 

The Authors of the "Lux Mundi." 

Eleven devout scholars of the school of 
Pusey, "with unity of conviction," con- 
tribute the twelve essays in the volume, 
desiring "it to be the expression of a com- 
mon mind and a common hope." They 
believe "that theology must take a now 
development/ 5 thai "the faith Deeds dis- 
encumbering, reinterpret ing, explaining." 



112 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

Their twelve "Tracts for the Times" 
would have met with as severe condemna- 
tion at the hands of the authors of the 
Oxford movement, could they have been 
written then, as did the Broad Church 
" Essays and Reviews." The Rev. Charles 
Gore, editor, and one of the contributors, 
is the Principal of Keble College. His 
essay on "Inspiration" has already re- 
ceived a like welcome from some of the 
narrower and unprogressive leaders of the 
party. The common method and spirit of 
all the essayists are seen to be the attempt 
to reconcile the Church and modern 
thought, including modern German criti- 
cism of the origines Christianas ; to show 
that Christ is the true Lux Mundi of 
thought and science, no less than of relig- 
ion. 

Reason is the only interpreter. " Rea- 
son interprets religion to itself, and by 
interpreting verifies and confirms." Re- 
ligion "dares to maintain that the foun- 
tain of wisdom and religion alike is God ; 



IN RELIGION. lib 

and if these two streams shall turn aside 
from him, both must assuredly run dry. 
For human nature craves to be both re- 
ligious and rational. And the life which 
is not both is neither " (p. 90). 

The Bible, the Church and individual 
reason are not three distinct messages or 
authorities. They must be so interpreted 
as to be seen to be but a manifold one — to 
be but parts of a concrete process. Sepa- 
rated from each other, abstracted from the 
process, each is alike false and misleading. 
Hence it is not each single man's reason 
or conscience that is ultimate ; nor is it the 
voice of the Church that alone proclaims 
the truth. It is the reason of the individ- 
ual, informed, enlightened, rationalized by 
the corporate reason of mankind recorded 
in the Bible and the Church. 

It is this which distinguishes their vol 
lime from Dr. Mart ineaifs work. The au- 
thors have heen trained and educated in the 

more concrete form of institutional Chris- 
tianity. Dr. Martineau has, to a great 



114 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

extent, been separated from this life. He 
has been an eagle in the air, an Alpine 
climber on the top of the Jung* Frau. 
They have passed their lives in the cool 
silence and hoty music of cathedral choir, 
and in the book-lined walls of cloistered 
college, and yet also in the midst of the 
modern Zeitgeist that has invaded and 
conquered old Oxford. 

How Influenced by German Criticism 
and Philosophy, by Prof. T. H. 
Green, and the Oxford Hegelian- 
ism. — Their Appeal to Reason. 

The influence of German philosophy is 
even more marked than that of German 
criticism in their essays. A noticeable 
token of this is found in the opening essay 
on " Faith." In spirit and method it is 
scarcely to be distinguished from a lay 
sermon on "faith" by the late Thomas 
Hill Green (the Professor Grey of " Robert 
Elsmere"), leader of the Hegelian school 
at Oxford. The same is true of the essays 



IN RELIGION. 115 

on "The Christian Doctrine of God," 
" The Incarnation and Development," and 
" The Incarnation as the Basis of Dog-ma. " 
In all these, it is true, the authors go 
much beyond Green, though not beyond 
Hegel, in starting from and remaining in 
the Divine reason done into the historical 
institution of the Church, with its Word, 
Ministry and Sacraments. 

The influence of Oxford Hegelianism in 
these essays is very marked. The late 
Thomas Hill Green profoundly influenced 
many of the brightest men at Oxford, 
leading them to a study of Hegel. But 
\ovy many thus influenced have been car- 
ried by Hegel's thought and their own en- 
vironment into the Anglo-Catholic party. 
This has given rise to a current saying in 
England, that all the honey from Green's 
bees goes into the Anglo-Cat holic hive.* 

* Since writing this chapter 1 have Looked over 
again the curious book of 8. Baring-Gould on 
"The Origin and Development ol Religious Be- 
lief," which was Btartling when first read some 
twenty years ago. I find it now, as then, a queer 



116 REASON AXD AUTHORITY 

But tliLs honey has had the vital power to 
transform the hive. It is another ease of 
the conquered giving laws to the conquer- 
ors. 

hodge* _ :f materialism and philosophy. The 
noteworthy thing- about it, coming from an An- 
„\ o-Catholie, is its appeal to philosophy for vindi- 
cation of the Christian religion, and especially 
s acceptance of Hegel's philosophy. 
Thus lie says,' 4 The importance of Hegel's method 
I think it impossible to overestimate. ... I 
believe that if the modern intellect is to be recon- 
ciled to the dogma of the Incarnation, it will be 
through Hegel's discovery." . . . •• He supplies 
a key to unlock the gate which has remained 
closed to the minds of modern Europe. ... I 
do not pretend to have done more than apply the 
Hegelian method to the rudiments of Christianity. 
to establish the rationale of its fundamental doc- 
trine, the Incarnation." Vol. II.. pp. 39. 40. 116 
and £75 

However ill-digested the materials which he 
worked up, and however imperfect his apprehen- 
sion of Hegel's method, he at least did pioneer 
work in calling attention to Hegel as a master in 
philosophy. I doubt not that his work has been 
one of the influences making " Lux Jfundi" pos- 
sible in that quarter. It need scarcely be said 
that their work is more scholarly and devout. 
Their style is man-like, while his is 

quite French-like. 



IN RELIGION. 117 

The Divine Immanence. 

The doctrine of Divine immanence is 
maintained as the Logos of the world both 
before and after the incarnation. Greek 
and Roman culture is received as " no 
alien element, bul a legitimate ingredient in 
Catholic, complete Christianity" (p. 1G8). 
" The history of pre-Christian religions is 
Like that of pre-Christian philosophy, a 
long preparation for the Gospel" (p. 171). 
The history of Christianity, too, is a long 
historical process of spiritual and mental 
assimilation and interpretation of the in- 
carnation. Christianity, both as to its 
records and its creeds, has a history and 
is " subject to all the condit ions of history 
and the laws of evidence/* Historical 
criticism is welcomed as a true handmaid, 
a part, of Ltu; Muudi. Bu1 historical 
conditions cannot invalidate the process 

they make possible. The word, the 
ministry and sacraments of the Church, 

though subject to all these conditions 



118 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

represents the real static elements in the 
process. They are the highest and truest 
expressions and interpretations of the Lux 
Munch'. 

Neither history, nor religion actualized 
in history, is an unfolding of abstract 
thought. Feeling, fancy, desire and will 
are also elements of the concrete life, and 
the Lux Mund i recognizes, uses, is imma- 
nent in them. Parable and myth and leg- 
end, proverb, drama and poetry, no less 
than prose, are vehicles of his presence and 
power and beneficence. Christianity is not 
merely philosophy or theology or cult or 
creed or institution, but it is all of these, 
together with all thrills of feeling and 
visions of fancy and deeds of will that 
are inwoven elements of Christian history. 
Criticism may be welcomed to the task of 
distinguishing these various elements, but 
it must be dismissed the moment that it sets 
up any one or all of its dissected abstracted 
elements as the whole truth. The life and 
light, the Logos and the Lux of the world 



IN RELIGION. 119 

are in the whole. This spirit and method 
of studying and appreciating- Christian 
history and institutions is notably that of 
Hegel. Indeed his impatience with the 
abstract critical stud}^ of religion is far 
greater than that of the authors of Lux 
Mundi. 

The Historical Method. 

Throughout Christian history, in which 
Church and creed and ritual and culture 
and life have been developed, "the entire 
human nature — imagination, reason, feel- 
ing, desire — becomes to faith a vehicle of 
intercourse, a mediating aid in its friend- 
ship with God" (p. 24c). Welcome all that 
historical criticism may do to discriminate 
these elements, but hold fast to all. " Faith 
appeals to such a complex history to just it'v 
its career; it bears about that history with 
it as its explanation why or how it lias 
arrived at its present condition" (p, 33), 
But mere "spiritualized Christianity" is 
abstract and evanescent. "The religion 



120 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

which attempts to be rid of the bodily side 
of things spiritual, sooner or later loses its 
hold of all reality. The Church of Christ 
is not so. It does not ignore the funda- 
mental conditions of human experience. 
The incarnation was the sanctifying of 
both parts of human nature, not the 
abolition of either. The Church, the 
sacraments, human nature, Jesus Christ 
himself, all are twofold ; all are earthly 
objective as well as transcendental spirit- 
ual" (p. 226). Hence the frank and un- 
wavering maintenance of the creeds, ritual 
and ministry of institutional Christianity. 
They are bone and flesh and feeling and 
reason of these essayists ; hence rational, 
in the highest and most concrete sense of 
the word. " There is one sense in which 
we may own that even the definitions of 
the creeds may themselves be called rela- 
tive and temporary. For we must not 
claim for phrases of earthly coinage a more 
than earthly and relative completeness" 
(p. 212). And yet there is a sense in which 



IN RELIGION. 121 

they are final and authoritative, being 
u simpty careful rehearsals of those inhe- 
rent necessities which inevitabty are in- 
volved in the rational construction of 
Christ's living character" (p. 41). 

In the same way the Sacramental system 
is rightfully maintained as a vital part of 
Christianity. Its rationality and necessity 
are justly vindicated by far different 
methods from those which have hitherto 
been in vogue with the Anglo-Catholic 
party. 

In short, no part of Catholic Christian- 
ity is given up, and yet no part is main- 
tained by the former arbitrary method of 
mere assertion. The re-setting, the justi- 
fying the parts by their history and their 
helpfulness and rationality, puts an en- 
tirely new phase upon the whole. 

There is nothing new in the modern 
thought and methods which characterize 
this volume. The only novelty is in finding 
them in the representatives of that party 
which lias from Hie first most vigorously 



122 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

protested against modern thought in favor 
of what the early Fathers thought and said 
under Divine inspiration. The Bible " con- 
tains " the word of God, but is subject to 
all the conditions of history and laws of 
evidence (p. 35). " The modern develop- 
ment of historical criticism is reaching 
results as sure, where it is fairly used, as 
scientific inquiry " (p. 298). Even Christ, 
in his teaching, " used human nature, its 
relation to God, its conditions of experi- 
ence, its growth in knowledge, its limita- 
tions of knowledge." Even the cry 
"remember Tuebingen" cannot frighten 
Mr. Gore from pleading for a free discus- 
sion of all these questions of Biblical 
criticism (301). All new truth of modern 
thought and science is welcomed as addi- 
tional rays of the Light of the world, help- 
ing to interpret and to understand the 
Bible (p. 448). 

Religion is to be interpreted and justified 
by reason manifested in a historical process 
of development. Morality is often far in 



IN RELIGION. 123 

advance of religion. The Reformation was 
a moral protest, a genuine moral revolt 
against a religion which had come to toler- 
ate immorality. " True religion is rational ; 
if it excludes reason it is self -condemned " 
(p. 68). " To say that a man need not inter- 
pret his religion to his reason, is like sa3 T iug 
Be religious ; but 3^ou need not let your re- 
ligion influence your conduct" (p. 74). Dar- 
win and Huxley and Fiske present a wider 
teleology than Pale} 7 (77). Of a previous 
book of Dr. Martineau on religion it is said 
that " No more earnest and vigorous, and, 
so far as it goes, no truer defence of relig- 
ion has been published in ourday." Phys- 
ical science and philosoply have destined 
the deistic conception so regnant in Chris- 
tian thought. " The one absolutely im- 
possible conception of God, in the present 
day, is that which represents him as an 
occasional Visitor " (82). " The conviction 
that the Divine immanence musl be for our 
age, as for the At liana sian age, the meet- 
ing point of the religious and philosophic 



124 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

view of God, is showing- itself in the most 
thoughtful minds on both sides " (p. 83). 

It is admitted " to be the province of 
reason to judge of the morality of the 
Scriptures " (p. 89). They are not fright- 
ened by what some ignorantly stigmatize 
as pantheism. Three typical theologians 
of three different ages are quoted, " using 
as the language of sober theology words 
every whit as strong as any of the famous 
pantheistic passages in our modern liter- 
ature " (60). It is frankly recognized that 
the orthodox thought has been cleared and 
served in no small part by "liberalizers." 
Such liberalizers are recognized as " help- 
ing to qualif y the materialism or supersti- 
tion of ignorant sacramentalists, or to 
banish dogmatic realisms about hell or 
explications of the atonement which malign 
God's Fatherhood" (p. 211). Such con- 
cessions to anti-dogmatists, as well as that 
of the merely relative finality of the creeds, 
are gladly granted "in the name of 
truth." 



IN RELIGION. 190 

The Holy Spirit is the author of all life. 
u The Spirit claims for his own and con- 
secrates the whole of nature. All that 
exists is in its essence very good" (273). 
The gradualness of the Spirit's method 
explains the most " unspiritual appearance 
of the Old Testament ;" explains how, e.g., 
Phineas' murder was reckoned to him for 
righteousness, and how Abraham obtained 
an even higher honor for being not a mur- 
derer only, but what was much worse, a 
child murderer " (pp. 274, 276). The same 
explains the imperfections, moral and in- 
tellectual, of the Christian Church, which 
has never been more than "a tendency, 
not a result ; a life in process, not a ripened 
fruit" (276). As to the Trinity, it is 
said that "it was only with an expressed 
apology for the imperfection of human 
language that the Church spoke of the 
Divine Three as persons at all " (280). 

The doctrine of the inspiration of the 
Scriptures is not conceded a place with 

bases of the Christian belief, **sen1 



126 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

is asked in the Creed to certain histori- 
cal facts " on grounds which, so far, are 
quite independent of the inspiration of 
the Evangelic records. All that we 
claim to show at this stage is that they 
are historical; not historical so as to be 
absolutely without error, but historical in 
the general sense, so as to be trustworthy w 
(284). Inspiration varies in degree, not 
in kind, in the teachers and writers of 
all religions and philosophies, and does not 
guarantee the exact historical truth of the 
records, as it is quite as consistent with 
mythallegoiy and poetry as with plain 
prose. Our Lord's use of Jonah's resur- 
rection as a type of his own does not de- 
pend in any real degree upon whether that 
was a historical fact or allegory, Dr. 
Pusey to the contrary notwithstanding. 
Neither does his use of Psalm CX. guar- 
antee its Davidic authorship (p. 300). 

The visible method of the working of 
the Spirit of Christ in the world is made 
the historical and rational basis of the 



IN RELIGION. 127 

organization of the Catholic Church, with 
its Apostolic ministry. The rational 
ground for the succession of such a minis- 
try is said to be ' ' the necessity for pre- 
serving in a catholic society, which lacks 
the natural links of race or language or 
common habitation, a visible and obliga- 
tory bond of association." The rationale 
and extent of authority in the Church is the 
same as that given by Plato and Hegel. 
It is irrational when used for suppressing 
individuality instead of nourishing it, for 
the reaction of the individual on society 
is needed to keep the common tradition 
pure and unnarrowed (272). The num- 
ber of granted " open questions," theolog- 
ical, ecclesiastical and liturgical, far ex- 
ceeds t ha1 hitherto allowed by the previous 
representatives of this party of final i/t/. 

Open Questions Granted. 

We have barely quoted some of the 
"open questions" and "concessions" grant- 
ed by the writers of this volume. They will 



128 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

amply suffice, however, to show " the new 
front," the new spirit and the new method 
under which these new leaders present 
" The Faith " for the rational acceptance 
of Christians of every name. The book, 
we would gladly believe, heralds a theo- 
logical renaissance of genuine catholic 
import and extent. 

The appeal is to reason, and awakens the 
affirmative response of reason. Such 
Catholics, Anglo or Americano, we would 
all gladly be. Such Catholicism we wel- 
come as the need of the world and the 
Church to-day. It is the Catholicism of 
the nineteenth century after Christ — the 
Lux Mundi of our own day. 

Such Catholicism is needed (1) not only 
to unify and inspire the diverse elements 
in our own Church, but it is also needed 
(2) to preserve, maintain and impart the 
heritage of Christian doctrine and wor- 
ship that to-day has a diminishing hold 
upon the Christian world. It is needed to 
save from mere negative critical results, 



IN RELIGION. 129 

and from the baldest Quakerism, both of 
which are the conspicuous features of the 
other great volume — that by Dr. Martin- 
eau. A presentation of his results will af- 
ford us the best occasion for further refer- 
ence to Lux Mundi as the genial anti- 
dote to the depressing*, almost killing, 
negations of his book. 

Dr. Martineau's Previous Works — Their 
Character and Style. 

Dr. Martineau — clarum et venerabile 
nomen — has made a whole generation of 
devout and intellectual men his debtors. 
His volume on " Endeavors after the 
Christian Life " has been a genuine aid 
to faith and to personal piety. His vol- 
umes of "Essays, Philosophical and 
Theological ," have helped many out of 
the mire of empiricism and utilitarian- 
ism, and out of the murky limbo of ag- 
nosticism. His "Hours of Thought on 
Sacred Things" though more analytical, 
subtile and subjective, still helped to wing 



130 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

the flight of the soul upwards " from the 
alone to The Alone." His more recent 
volumes on "Ethics" and "Religion" 
have been positive and constructive. 
Throughout he appears as an armed 
Christian knight, full of the vigor and joy 
of battle. He is a born warrior, but 
trained to fight single-handed, rather than 
as general in a large organized army. 
The Primacy of the English Church might 
easily have been his, if he had been a loyal 
member of it. He justly merited the 
marked ovation of respect recently paid 
him. 

The marring elements of his intellectual 
work have been those which have helped to 
make it efficient — that is, his keen polem- 
ics and his brilliant rhetoric. A disturbing 
satiety of style is found in his last volume. 

We wish that we had no other criticism 
to offer. It is painful to criticise one 
whom we have learned to esteem and love 
as a conservative helper in philosophy, 
ethics and religion. His radical critical 



IN RELIGION. 131 

attitude towards creed and church in this 
volume are unexpected and painful. But 
we are spared this pain throughout Book 
I., in which he traces, with glad mind and 
heart, the evidences of God in nature, in 
humanity, in conscience and in history. 
Here he is positive and conservative, using 
his keenest weapons against materialism 
and utilitarianism. Here he commands 
assent and gratitude. Doubt is banished 
and faith is regnant. This part was writ- 
ten some eighteen years ago, for the ex- 
tinct American magazine " The Old and 
New." He had then collected materials 
for u a compendious survey of the ground 
of botli Natural and Historical religion as 
accepted in Christendom." Released from 
preoccupation with philosophy two years 
ago, lie found thai liis materials for the 
historical part -especially for the lirst t wo 

centuries of Christianity— had become un- 
trustworthy, lie set ;it work to overtake 
the advance made in historical research 

and criticism. The admirably lucid anil 



133 REASON AXD A UTHORITY 

full work of the German scholars made 
this a comparatively easy task. To this 
fresh study is due by far the larger part 
of the volume, which is so radically de- 
structive of "The Faith.''* 

It is scarcely just to pass over the first 
part of Dr. Martineau's volume without 
generous praise and extended quotation. 
It is a continuously profound, subtle and 
convincing argument for the existence and 
presence of God, as opposed to all materi- 
alistic and agnostic theories. The three 
grand discoveries of modern science. (1) 
the immense extension of the universe in 
space and (2) in time, and (3) the correla- 
tion and conservation of forces, may seem 
to banish God from nature. " But," asks 
Dr. Martineau, "is it not childish, then, 
to be terrified out of our religion by the 
mere scale of things, and because the little 
Mosaic firmament is broken in pieces, to 
ask whether its Divine Ruler is not also 
gone?" (p. 8). Again, '''though natural 
forces have lost their birthday . . . they are 



IN RELIGION. 133 

no more entitled, by mere longevity, to 
serve an ejectment on the Divine element 
than the Divine element is to claim every- 
thing from them" (p. 19). The third 
conception of forces also leads to the theis- 
tic conception of the one supreme Will. 
All three of these modern scientific con- 
eeptions only serve " to elevate and glorify 
the religious interpretation of nature." 
And yet nature is "not God's character- 
istic sphere of self-expression. Rather 
it is his eternal act of self -limitation . . . 
the stooping* of the Infinite Will to an 
everlasting self-sacrifice.' 5 

It is in humanity and humanity's history 
that his mind and heart are more clearly 
revealed. Conscience is the voice of G-od 
in the soul of man, divinely admonishing, 
inspiring, guiding humanity. In Christi- 
anity this voice of law is transformed Into 
the voice of Love. "The veil falls from 
the shadowed luce of moral authority, and 
the directing Love of the all-holy God 
shines forth" (p. 75). Eistorj shows us 



m rsajs ::" axd authobity 

stages Oris rama of humanity and 
Divine Love. H.imanity is not only a 

/-lived organ : it is also a::: 
organ of 3 

His Bald I . ' rm. 

But we must turn from the part that 
will win praise and thanks from all good 
Christians to that larger part which will 
startle, pain, shame and anger nearly all 
who profess nd call themselves hris- 
tian- J : he puts forth as " approved " 
the whole mass of the most radical modern 
leslrucUve criticism of Church. Bible and 
Theology. He himself thus estimates the 

- Its of his own wor : l€ As I look back 
on the foregoing discussions, a conclusion 
is forced upon me on which I cannot dwell 
without pain and dismay, viz.. that 

hrisfe - ined or understood 

in the churches which formulate it, has 
been mainly evolved from what is trar s e I 
and perishable in its sources : from what 
is unhistorical in its traditions, mvtho- 



IN RELIGION. 



135 



logical in its preconceptions, and misap- 
prehended in the oracles of its prophets. 
From Eden to the sounding- of the last 
trumpet, the whole story of the divine 
order of the world is dislocated and de- 
formed. 

" To consecrate and diffuse, under the 
name of ' Christianity'/ a theory of the 
world's economy thus made up of illusions 
from obsolete stages of civilization, im- 
mense resources, material and moral, are 
expended, with effects no less deplorable in 
the province of religion than would be, in 
that of science, hierarchies and missions for 
propagating the Ptolemaic astronomy 
and inculcating the rules of necromancy 
and exorcism." (p. f>50.) 

We need give bu1 a brief r6sum6 of the 
discussion leading to this almost atheis- 
tic conception of Christian history, before 
passing to a criticism of his whole concep- 
tion and method. 

In Book II he treats of ,k Authority 

Artijicialh/ Misplaced." His two ah- 



1 36 BE AS OX AXD A UTHORIT Y 

tagonists are the C 5S and the 

iestants, who "are possessed with 
the idea that they have actually got di- 
vine truth enclosed within a ring fence,, 
still pure and integral after all these 
:.l BS." They agree in having an e 
authority : they differ in attributing it, 
the one to : . the other to a 

-ature. As between Lambeth. Gene- 
va and Rome, he decides that Rome has 
clearly the best right to the stupendous 
claim of being the Church, or the corpo- 
rate keeper of the truth. Hence his first 
chapter is on " The C I the 

Church." Xo Protestant could wish for 
a more drastic criticism of its preferred 
>tes " of the true Church, i.e., Unity, 
Sanctity , U and Apostolii 

The Councils of Ephesus and Constance; 
Borgia. Tetzel and Torcjueniada — the 
whole host of blots on Christian history 
are so emblazoned over its pages as to 
render the text illegible. It presents the 
errors and superstitions and weaknesses 



IN RELIGION. 137 

of the Church, without the slightest ap- 
preciation of its organization, character 
and beneficence. With one fell, though 
long-continued and massive criticism, he 
destroys the Church of Rome, Lambeth 
and Geneva. He really polemicizes the 
Church under any and ever}^ form, and 
awakens S3^mpathy rather than antipathy 
for the "mother dear "even in Roman 
form. 

In the second chapter he deals like 
wholesale negative criticisms to " the 
Protestants and the Scriptures." No 
Romanist would applaud his professed 
achievement of destining the word of 
God contained in the Bible. To six of the 
epistles of St. Paul he allows merely possi- 
ble genuineness. The S3'noptical Gospels 
wholly lack both genuineness and au- 
thenticity, being a mass of unhistorical 
accretions, false chronology, irreconcil- 
able contradictions and fabulous concep- 
tions. The Fourth Gospel was writ- 
ben in the middle of 11m 1 second century 



138 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

by a Platonized Christian, who sought to 
prove that Jesus was the Son of God 
by transfiguring received traditions into 
philosophical realism. 

We may spare the reader any detailed 
account of his criticism of the Gospels 
by quoting a passage in the latter part 
of the volume. This is from Book V., 
wiiich professes to be reconstructive. 
The first chapter is on " The Veil Taken 
Aivay." This is evidently the heart of 
the book, the key-chapter of the whole 
volume. To read it is to know the whole 
work. Ex uno disce omnes. But we 
give the quotation first, though it occurs 
at the beginning of the next chapter : 

" The portions of the synoptic texts 
which remain on hand, after severing 
what the foregoing rules exclude, can by 
no means be accepted en masse as all 
equally trustworthy. They are relieved 
simply of the impossible, and contain only 
what might be true " (p. 602). The italics 
are Dr. Martineau's. 



IN RELIGION. 139 

Iii this Book V. Dr. Martineau reveals 
most clearly the Puritan , or rather the Qua- 
ker conception of Christianity that domi- 
nates his whole work. He constructs the 
historical Christ from his own subjective 
Christ. The Biblical, the ecclesiastical and 
the theological Christs are perversions of 
the " Light of the world " that has immedi- 
ately shone into his mind. The nimbus and 
the corona are due to the refracting media 
through which the orb has shone. It is im- 
possible for any true historical portrait to 
be produced. Christian theolog3 x and tradi- 
tion and worship have only served to ren- 
der the prophecj'true to-day that his vis- 
age "was so marred more than air- 
man's." Their cry, " Behold the God," 
renders it, forever impossible for us to " be- 
hold the man." Yet even this perversion 
gives him a rule for separating the true 
from the false in the portrait of Jesus. 

But; what a Persian sword this rule 

seems to be ! What a coup de grace, be- 
heading more keenly and surely than any 



140 RE AS OX AXD A UTHORITY 

guillotine ! The rule is simply that of ex- 
cluding '• allthat men have thought about 
his person, functions and office/' and re- 
taining "what Jesus himself teas, in 
spiritual character and moral relation to 
God." Dr. Martineau goes on (p. 575) to 
assert that the Apostles and all Christian 
teachers in every Church, from the most 
hierarchical to the most reformed, have 
put forth their own thoughts about Jesus, 
instead of delivering to men the religion 
of Jesus Christ. [The italics throughout 
are Dr. Martineairs.] " "We must not mis- 
take all this scholastic dust for the divine 
radiance that shoots through it, and lends 
it a glory not its own." But, alas ! he con- 
fesses " the real figure cannot, unfortu- 
nately, be seen by us except through the 
medium of human theories and preposses- 
sions." Where then is he to find the real 
Jesus, when all these false accretions have 
been set aside ? 

He confesses that " it is perhaps a blind 
infatuation that impels us to seek, and a 



IA RELIGION. 



141 



blind incompetence that forbids us to find 
such a portrait untinctured by some con- 
ceptions of our own." " It is in the sub- 
jective tincture of our spirits, not in the 
objective constructions of our intellect, 
that his consecration enters and holds us." 
Hence, " to draw forth the objective truth 
from behind this mist of prepossessions, we 
are thrown entirety upon internal evi- 
dence." Three rules may aid us in this 
hopeless task. I abbreviate, without mar- 
ring, these rules. 

1st. Reject all possible anachronisms, 
as where the narrators make past history 
out of present facts and fancies. 

2d. Reject miracles that can be ac- 
counted for by natural causes, and the 
subjective conceptions of the narrator. 

3d. Retain all acts and words ascribed 
to Jcsns which plainly t ranscend the moral 
level of the narrators, and reject all such 
as arc out of character with his spirit, 
but congruous wit li I heirs. 

"The first of these rules compels us to 



142 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

treat as unauthentic, in its present form, 
every reputed or implied claim of Jesus to 
be the promised Messiah." " His investi- 
ture with that character was the retro- 
spective work of his disciples " (p. 577). 
In his last clays " his depression of spirit 
was due to his anticipation of rejection and 
martyrdom; not, however, as Messiah, 
but as Messiah's herald . . . he was sim- 
ply the continuator of the Baptist's mes- 
sage " (p. 625). 

So, too, the extension of the Gospel to the 
Gentiles was not embraced within the 
message of its founder (p. 585). Here, too, 
history is imagined back into prophecy by 
the apostles. 

Dr. Martineau finds the application of 
his third rule " a much more difficult and 
delicate task for the critic." Here his 
own subjective preferences afford the only 
means of discriminating between the true 
and the false in the gospel portrait. Thus 
he finds " the self-proclamation of meek- 
ness and lowliness of heart, and the pomp- 



IN RELIGION. 143 

ous elevation above Jonah and Solomon 
and the temple, are out of keeping- with 
his personality." So, too, is "the irrita- 
tion attributed to him by St. Luke against 
the obduracy of his own people," and 
also the unbecoming dinner-table invective 
against Pharisaic hypocris}^ and ambition 
(596-599). There is finally left only " a few 
ineffaceable lineaments which could only 
belong to a figure unique in grace and 
majesty" (601). 

The great part of the true story of Jesus 
has been hopeless^ ruined in the trans- 
mission. Only " here and there a precious 
shred of it turns up at last under the eye 
of a far-off observer, who brings it un- 
spoiled to light." Sucl) shreds our author, 
the "far-off* observer," tries to "bring 
unspoiled to the light " in his last chapter 
on "The Christian Religion Personally 
Realized. 9 '' Here he says much thai is 
line and deep and spiritual as to the char- 
acter of Jesus. The few lingering shreds 
of t rue history afford him thoughts almost 



144 J?r— / V AM> AUTHORITY 

too deep for utterance. Yet he has pre- 
viously excluded "all that men have 
thought about Jesus as anhistorical, 

and confessed the limitations of subjective 

-ptions. Xo wonder, then, tha: 
adds. " As I look back on the foregoing 
discussions, a conclusion is forced upon me 
on which I cannot dwell without pain and 
dismay." How much more will his 
results bring pain and dismay to othei 
Christians who thus find their Lord 
. unless, like the first disciples, 
they find him not in the tomb, but appear- 
ing- to them in the resurrection form and 
power of his holy Catholic Churc 

Dr. Martineau, it should be said, does 
not believe in the resurrection of Jesus 
from the tc :nb. " The absolute conviction 
of this on the part of his follower is mong 
the most certain of historical facts. But 
it belongs to hist and not to his, 

which has its continuance in quite another 
sphere " (p. 649). 

What is left ? " I am brought to a fur- 



IN RELIGION. 145 

ther conclusion, in which I must rest in 
peace and hope, viz., that Christianity, 
understood as the personal religion of 
Jesus Christ, stands clear of all the perish- 
able elements, and realizes the true relation 
between man and God." But even Jesus' 
own personal religion does not impty that 
he was absolutely "without sin." As 
Mediator, Uplifter, Inspirer, " he needs 
only to be better than we are." And he is 
Mediator, "not instead of immediate 
revelation, but simply as making" us more 
aware of it, and helping us to interpret it. 
For in the very constitution of the human 
soul there is provision for an immediate 
apprehension of God. . . And if Jesus of 
Nazareth, in virtue of the character of his 
spirit, holds the place of Prince of Saints, 
and perfects the conditions of the pure 
religious life, he thereby reveals the high- 
est possibilities of the human soul, and 
their dependence on habitual communion 
between man and (Jod" (Conclusion, pp, 
651-2). 



\ 

146 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

His Critical Methods and Negative 
Be salts. 

We have endeavored to note faithfully 
the method and results of Dr. Martineau, 
and to abstain from running criticism. We 
have read his biography and gazed upon 
his portrait of our Lord with mingled pain 
and astonishment and resentment. We 
have spared the reader a resume of Book 
IV., in which he treats in the same negative 
way the various Christian " Theories of 
the Person of Jesus " and " Theories of the 
Work of Jesus. " Suffice it to say that 
he does not treat the thoughts of Fathers, 
councils and theologians on these topics 
with any greater regard or conservation 
than he does those of the writers of the 
New Testament. 

We have endeavored to be just, in order 
that we might criticise justly this work of 
a great devout man. 

The title of this book is " The Seat of 
Authority in Religion" But the field 



IN RELIGION. 147 

covered by his work includes (1) What is 
the ground of faith? (2) What is " The 
Faith," negatively considered ? His sub- 
stantial reply to the first is, that faith is 
faith, or an immediate apprehension of an 
unmediated revelation of God to the soul. 
To the second his substantial reply is that 
"The Faith" of Evangelists, Apostles, 
fathers, councils, creeds, theologians 
and Church is not " the faith," but only 
" illusions from obsolete stages of civiliza- 
tion," " evolved from what is transient, 
unhistorical and mythological," wholly 
concealing- the truth. 

It is this latter and larger part of his 
work that demands chief criticism. 

(1.) A few remarks must, however, i>« i 
offered upon his first topic — faith and its 
ground. Dr. Marti neau is here a Quaker 
in religion and an intuitionalisl in phi- 
losophy. He rejects all mediations as an 
obstruction and an impertinence. u Re- 
vealed religion is an immediate divine 
knowledge, strictly personal and indi- 



148 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

vidual, and must be born anew in every 
mind" (p. 307). He joins with those 
who ask us to set aside the divine influ- 
ences transmitted to us by history, as 
impertinent obtrusions between the soul 
and God, and to retire wholly to the ora- 
cle within for private audience with God, 
though professedly acknowledging the 
danger in this position. 

In his preface he also says, " I am pre- 
pared to hear, after dispensing with mir- 
acles and infallible persons, I have no 
right to speak of authority at all, the in- 
tuitional assurance which I substitute for 
it being nothing but confidence in my own 
reason." To this he demurs that his in- 
tuitions are not his own but God's — their 
source is Divine. This position in religion 
is certainly the reductio ad absurdum — 
one phase of Protestantism. It is to be 
noted, however, that Dr. Martineau is en- 
tirely unjust to Protestants, in not noting 
his mark of their reformation. He confines 
them to a book-religion, almost dishon- 



IN RELIGION. 149 

estly ignoring* their distinctive doctrine of 
justification by faith of the individual. 
The Protestant, however, is more just 
and rational than lie himself; for the 
Protestant does make this faith of the 
individual dependent upon, mediated by 
the Gospel records of the life of God in 
the soul of Jesus. 

In philosophy this theory of immediate 
intuitional knowledge by individuals has 
had a history that ought to suffice to 
show its utter abstractness and untruth- 
fulness. Mediation is the method of the 
universe and the life of the Spirit. The 
immediate — if such a thing is thinkable — 
is the crude, raw, uninformed, uneduca- 
ted, uncivilized, unchristianized and nn- 
rationalized. We feel, we live, we know 
only through mediation, through rela- 
tions to a surrounding set of mediations. 
Intuitionalism in philosophy, as Quaker- 
ism in religion, is a negation that only 
lives by surreptitiously appropriating all 
the mediations that it profoundly denies. 



150 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

Let Dr. Martineau really blot out and un- 
relate himself from all the thoughts of 
evangelists about Christ and all the creed 
and deed of his professed Church, from 
the whole of the Christian sentiment, cul- 
ture and civilization in which he has 
been bathed from earliest years, and he 
would be in some primitive stage of na- 
ture-religion, worshipping a log or a stone. 
Without the mediation of the Christian 
Church, history and life, he would never 
know there was a Christ, or have any 
loftier human ideal than a Hottentot. In 
philosophy he would be equally primitive, 
and therefore equally incapable and un- 
worthy of a thought. 

Criticism of His Booh by Contrast with 
the Lux Mundi. 

Yet Dr. Martineau's conception of 
faith as a personal conviction of relation 
with God is almost identical with that of 
Canon Holland, in the first essay in Lux 
Mundi. Canon Holland makes " faith an 



IN RELIGION, 151 

elemental act of the personal self/' the mo- 
tion in us of our sonship in the Father, 
the conscious recognition and realization 
of our inherent filial adhesion to God," 
" our personal intimacy with God." " To 
the end faith remains an act of personal 
and spiritual adhesion." Both Dr. Marti- 
neau and Canon Holland have the Evan- 
gelical or Protestant conception of faith. 
II. Whence, then, the difference, when 
they pass from this to the concrete con- 
tent which this faith receives and lives 
by ? Whence the immense difference as 
to the amount and worth of " The Faith " 
as held by Dr. Martineau and the authors 
of " Lux Mundi " ? The difference does 
not come, let us say, from either igno- 
rance or rejection of German criticism by 
the authors of the latter volume. They 
have studied the same works with open 
mind. They have accepted the principles 
and many of the results of this criticism, 
and " plead t hat t heology may Leave the 
Held open for the free discussion o\' these 



152 BE AS OX AXD A UTHORITY 

questions which Biblical criticism has re- 
cently been raising " (p. 301). 

Every form of literature is conceded as 
entering into the complex of inspired Scrip- 
tures. •'•' A considerable idealizing element 
in the Old Testament history '" is recog- 
nized. Myth and parable, poetic and 
dramatic composition, are as much vehicles 
of Divine revelation as plain prose. 

So also is the historical method welcomed 
as an aid to the explaining of the how and 
why of the form of Church polity, creed 
and ritual. The gradualness of the Spirit's 
method, the development through the 
imperfect to the less imperfect in all these 
forms is fully recognized. The Christian 
Church has always been "a hope, not a 
realization: a tendency, not a result;* a 
life in process, not a ripened fruit." " The 
true self of the Church is the Holy Spirit, 
but a great deal in the Church at any date 
does not belong to her true self, and is ob- 
scuring the Spirit's mind " (pp. £76, 2 

The theorv of evolution is also frankly 



IN RELIGION. 153 

accepted, congenial as it is with the his- 
torical method. It is accepted as involving- 
new ways of their attitude towards all 
knowledge. " Organisms, nations, lan- 
guages, institutions, customs, creeds, have 
all come to be regarded in the light of their 
development, and we feel that to under- 
stand what a thing really is, we must 
examine how it came to be. . . . Our 
religious opinions, like all things else that 
have come down on the current of develop- 
ment, must justify their existence by an 
appeal to the past. . . In the face of 
the historical spirit of the age, the study 
of past theology can never again be re- 
garded as merely a piece of religious anti- 
quarianism" (pp. 151, 152). The physical. 
mental, moral and religious possessions of 
humanity, all come under the conception 
of evolution in harmony with the docl Pine 
of the incarnation. Thought is alive, in 
movement in both God and man, "inca- 
pable of being chained to any one mode 
of expression; incapable of being stereo- 



154 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

typed " (163). As to Christianity, pre- 
Christian religions and philosophy are rec- 
ognized as positive preparations and con- 
tributions ; " all great teachers, of what- 
ever kind being vehicles of revelation" 
(165). So, too, every student in science 
contributes to Christian thought, " his 
discoveries being in fact revelations." All 
past religions, philosophy and science aid 
in " the progressive purification of the 
religious idea of God, till he is revealed 
as what he is to a thinking Christian 
people of to-day — the Object of reverent 
worship, the moral ideal, the truth of 
nature and man " (p. 56). As full justice 
is done pagan religions as could be asked 
by any impartial student. " In them Christ 
was schooling himself for incarnation." 

Bouleversment of this Party's Method. 

A more complete bouleversment of 
method has never been seen in any religious 
party. With these writers at least it has 
ceased to be a mere "party " and has be- 



IN RELIGION. 



156 



come a "school of thought." They hold, 
with the Greek fathers, " the true succes- 
sors of Plato and Aristotle " (p. 167), that 
"Christianity is a Divine philosophy and 
the Church its school" (p. 321). It has 
assimilated the Broad Church element. It 
illustrates, as Hegelianism itself has done, 
Hegel's dictum that " a party truly 
shows itself to have won the victory when 
it breaks up into two parties ; for so it 
proves that it contains in itself the prin- 
ciple with which it first had to conflict, and 
thus that it has got beyond the one-sided- 
ness which was incidental to its flrsl 
expression." It remains to be seen whether 
or not the Broad Church school can assim- 
ilate the Christian heritage contended 
for by this part\-. It still orientates, not 
that it, may stand gazing upon a fixed 
historical fact, but that it may trace the 
rays of the immundated l/ux Dei, Thus, 

with Hegel these writers find in "this 
process Of development and realization of 



1 56 BE AS ON AND A UTHORIT Y 

spirit the true Theodiccea." (Hegel's 

Philosophy of History, 477 ) 

Here, too, we find the secret of the im 
mense difference between them and Dr. 
Martineau as to " The Faith. ' ' It is in their 
philosophy of history, which is that of He- 
gel. It is their philosophy of history which 
puts all the past in a new light, and compels 
them to stand by the accumulated heritage 
of the Christian Church. Here these wri- 
ters rationally diverge widely and radi- 
cally from Dr. Martineau. I have quoted 
Canon Holland's idea of the act of faith as 
identical with that of Dr. Martineau. But 
while he seeks to hold it in abstract sub- 
jective isolation, Canon Holland recognizes 
that it has had a history and a develop- 
ment. Faith necessarily acts and reacts 
upon all the complicated relations of life. 
It objectifies itself and gathers all its acts 
into a body, a creed, a cult. Faith begets 
" the Faith," as it apprehends the pro- 
gressive revelations of its Divine Object. 
In an exercise of faith to-dav we cannot 



IN RELIGION. 157 

" force ourselves back into primitive days 
and imagine ourselves children again.* 7 
Our story has been a long and difficult 
One, Our faith has implicated itself with 
a vast body of feelings, fancies and facts. 
The faith, as we have it, is now old. " It 
has had a history like everything else, 
and it reaches us to-day in a form which 
that history behind it can alone make 
intelligible. Like all else that is human, 
it has grown. The details of events are 
the media of that growth. . . . But 
the history, which constitutes our diffi- 
culty, is its own answer. . . . We cry 
out for the simple primitive faith. But 
once again this is a mistake of dates. We 
cannot ask to be as if eighteen centuries 
had dropped out unnoticed — as if the mind 
had slumbered since the days of Christ, and 
had never asked a question. . . . Now 
WB must attain our cohesion with (Un\. 
subject to all the necessities laid upon us 

by the fact that we enter on the world's 

Stage at a late hour, when the drama has 



158 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

already developed its plot and complicated 
its situations. This is why, in full view of 
the facts, we cannot believe in Christ with- 
out finding- that our belief includes the 
Bible and the Creeds" (pp. 33, 37, 48). 

These New Leaders Change it from a 
"Party " into a "School of Thought." 

This is a very opposite way of appreciat- 
ing- history from that of Dr. Martineau, 
who rejects "all that men have thought 
about Christ" — all ideas that Apostles, 
fathers, councils, theologians and the 
Church have uttered about the person and 
work of Jesus, as perversions and hin- 
drances to a true Christian faith. Dr. 
Martineau is abstract and unhistorical. 
They are historically concrete and ration- 
al. They hold the same as Hegel, who 
says, " It is important that the Christian 
religion be not limited to the literal words 
of Christ himself. It is clear that the 
Christian community produces the Faith. 
It is not merely the mechanical sum of 



IN RELIGION. 159 

Christ's words, but the product of the 
Church enlightened by the Spirit." 

With their philosophy of history, too, 
must be coupled their own historical edu- 
tion. They have been born and nurtured in 
historical and institutional Christianity. 
They survey past and present Christianity 
from within the institution. Dr. Martin- 
eau's survey is practically from outside of 
such Christianity. He will not recognize 
it as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. 
It is this that prevents him from having- a 
true historical appreciation of the Church, 
and causes him to regard its eighteen cen- 
tnries of history as practically an apostasy 
from, an obscuration of, the Imx Mundi. 

The characteristic difference between 
them is the same as that between Plato 
and Aristotle. Dr. Martineau, with all his 
splendor of imagery, subtile analysis and 
charm of language, is still "all in the air," 
like a man in a balloon, not going anywhere 
in particular. The others are working 

citizens and intellectual rulers in the 



160 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

civitas Dei beneath., of which he catches 
only glimpses and distorted views through 
the mists of earth. 

Dr. Martineau is seeking for primitive, 
undeveloped Christianity. He wants to 
find the unfledged eagle in the unaddled 
egg. He is straining his eye to catch " the 
lig-ht that never was on sea or land . ' ' They 
are enjoying the light which enlightens 
and warms now, as it has eighteen centu- 
ries of Christian folk. The}^ have suckled 
at the breast of the Christian social or- 
ganism ; he seeks to be a spiritual Simeon 
Stylites, rejecting- all media between him- 
self and God; a Christian Melchisedec, 
without genealogy. An old Grecian said 
that the best education he could choose for 
his son would be to make him a citizen in 
* a good state with good laws. They have 
become good Christians in the same ob- 
jective social way. They recognize their 
spiritual ancestry and home training. 
They have been loyal members of a good 
Church. 



IN RELIGION. 161 

So, too, their conception of the Church 
and its history fits into a world-process and 
renders that process intelligible. His con- 
ception is so purely subjective that it has 
no place outside of himself, no consistency 
with airy large historical process or insti- 
tution. Even the Christ concealed by 
history cannot be seen, he confesses, with- 
out some distorting subjective conceptions 
of his own. Thus his own, as well as the 
corporate conceptions of the Church, hide 
what he would gladly find and use as an 
interpreter of his own immediate appre- 
hension of God. His is the neo-Platonic 
effort at ecstasy which logically loads, as 
it has always historically led, to despair. 
Kingsley's spirited description of Hv pa tia\s 
attempt is forever true on earth. They 
believe in the divine immanence, especially 
in the logic of Christian history, that the 
human spirit through eighteen centuries 
has no more been abandoned by God than 
lias nat are. This history has been bu1 the 
actualizing gradually of the true nature 



162 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

of man through a practical assimilation 
and a rational apprehension of the image 
of God. 

The history of spirit is its deed. It 
is objectively only what it does, and its 
deed has been the Christian Church and 
civilization. The true history of man is 
that of his institutions, and none is great- 
er than the Church. He believes largely 
in the Divine absence from Christian his- 
tory. His study of it is that which Hegel 
characterizes as reflective history, where 
" the workman approaches his task with 
his own spirit — a spirit distinct from that 
of the element he is to manipulate." 
Their method is that Hegel, " a thoughtful 
consideration of history with the simple 
conception that " Reason (Divine Wisdom) 
is the sovereign of the world ; that the 
history of the world, therefore, presents 
us with a rational process." (Philoso- 
phy- of History, p. 9.) Indeed, one can 
read beneath* nearly 'every line of their vol- 



£JN RELIGION. 163 

ume the inspiring conceptions of Hegel's 
" Philosophy of History ." 

Dr. Martineau will certainly afford the 
chronic revilers of Protestantism, who 
know not Hegel, much less Christ, a good 
example of what they say is the logical 
outcome of Protestantism. We demur 
in toto to such a conception of Protes- 
tantism, which bears the visible imprima- 
tur of the Divine blessing. But Dr. Mar- 
tinea u's extreme individualism and utter 
lack of historical appreciation certainly 
does call for a halt. Here is a decisive 
parting of ways. It is either concrete, 
historical, institutional Christianity, or it 
is nothing. The " Lux Mundi" essay- 
ists vindicate the rationality of instituted 
Christianity. They do not, like their pre- 
decessors and spiritual fathers, stop with 
an uncriticised acceptance of it, nor, like 
Dr. Martineau, with a critical non-accept- 
anee. But they pass through criticism to a 
genuinely historical appreciation and a 
hearty acceptance of their Christian heri- 



164 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

tage. The Church has never yet realized 
its ideal, which however is its basis and 
goal. Like individual Christians, it has 
gone stumbling- to and fro between its ideal 
and its caricature. " Non adhuc requat 
hoc regnum."' 

Dean Stanley's " Christian Institu- 
tions " is the elder brother of their volume. 
It would be more correct, however, to call 
Baring-- Gould's book the congenial pre- 
cursor of "Lux Mundi." Dean Stanley's 
book so presents the historical environ- 
ments as to make them seem to be the 
efficient cause and the just measure of the 
worth of Christian institutions. It lacks 
the philosophical element. 

Their Adoption of Hegelian Concep- 
tions of Rationality, Revelation 
and Authority. 

Hegel's view of the authority of the 
Church, which Principal Gore quotes, is 
that of the dignity, worth and adequacy 
of the utterances and works of the relig- 



IN RELIGION. 165 

ious consciousness of the ethical aristoc- 
racy of the community, as opposed to 
those of a subjective capricious individual- 
ism, which Protestantism is not. "The 
idea of the Church is this, that it widens 
life by deepening' the sense of brotherhood ; 
... by checking the results of isolated 
thinkers by contact with other thinkers ; 
and that it expands and deepens worship 
by eliminating all that is selfish and nar- 
row, and giving expression to common 
aims and feelings " (p. 307). "It treats 
man as a social being who cannot realize 
himself in isolation " (2G9). He can be- 
come relatively complete only in social re- 
lations, and relatively a good Christian 
by being a good Churchman, as. both 
Catholic and Protestant vigorously main- 
tain. 

If we are to choose, then, between Dr. 
Martineau's and their "Seal el* Authori- 
ty in Religion/ 3 we must, as rational (and 
as Christian) men, choose with those who 
may be accused of sanctifying all ( ihrisl ian 






BEASOX AXD AUTHORITY 

history, rather than with him who may 
be accused of regarding it all as profane 
and atheistic. 

The real is the rational. Institutions 
are greater than men. They are the 
utterances, or outer&nces, of the Spirit, to 
educe the incarnate spirit in socialized 
man. Unus Christianus, Nullus Chris- 
tian he Church is to the individual 
what language is to thought, what deed 
is to creed — vehicle and creator at once. 

The conceptions of (1) Rationality (2) 
Revelation and (3) Authority which are 
regnant in this volume are thoroughly 
Hegelian. They steer clear of the ab- 
stract individualism, of which Dr. Martin- 
eau is a conspicuous type, and of the no 
less abstract socialism, under the form of 
arbitrary ecclesiastical authority. 

1st. The reason appealed to is not that 
of the abstract individual, but that of cor- 
porate man. as objectified or done into 
history. The image of God. the true na- 
ture of man. is recognized as being gradu- 






IN RELIGION. 167 

ally educed from humanity in historic pro- 
cess. Humanity is an organism on its 
religious no less than on its political side. 
And the eduction of rational religion is 
therefore through social religious institu- 
tions, rather than through prophet, re- 
former, or great religious leader or teach- 
er. These are but the organs, the mouth- 
pieces of the religious consciousness of the 
organism. 

Hegel has forever made it impossible to 
appeal to reason, other than that of social 
man, expressed in his institutions. He 
has forever made it irrational to appeal 
to the subjective views of parts instead 
of the whole of the organism. He has 
brought back again the Greek ideal, only 
synthesizing therewith more justly the 
subjective element, making individuals or- 
ganic members of the organism — making 
the organism an organism of organisms, 
the life of the whole throbbing through 
every pari — instead of standing above the 



168 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

parts and mechanically ordering them in- 
to system. 

To be himself, the individual must be 
social. To realize his own ideal he must 
realize the ideal of his community. On 
the other hand, the life of the whole can 
only manifest and realize itself through 
its organic members. The State and 
Church are the organisms which thus 
synthesize and live through the life of their 
members. They gather together and 
most completely represent, the one the 
moral, the other the religious conscious- 
ness of humanity. They are its objecti- 
fied reason. To be a member of a good 
State and a good Church, then, is the only 
rational way of self-realization for the in- 
dividual. They limit him only to educate 
and realize him, just as the family does 
the child. They are his true wisdom and 
his higher law. 

This conception of corporate reason a] so 
leads to the philosophy of history, of 
which Hegel has been the chosen mouth- 



IN RELIGION. 169 

piece of the Spirit. It is simply that of 
the progressive eduction of the rationality 
of man in his institutions, in politics, art, 
religion and philosophy. It denies chance 
and affirms reason as regnant through- 
out history. It denies " decadence " and 
"cycles" of history repeating itself, and 
affirms progress in history. It denies 
continuous progress, and affirms progress 
by antithesis. It accepts with universal- 
ized significance the religious view of 
Providence in history. It declines to in- 
dite the whole, no less than certain parts, 
of history for unintelligibility or freedom- 
from the control of immanent, regnant 
Providence. History is viewed as recital 
not merely of events, but of intelligent 
events — events in and over which Provi- 
dence has been working. 

This, too, differentiates it from the em- 
pirical historical method so much in 
vogue to-day. This perversion oi' the true 
method seeks to account for knowledge, 
morals, religions, and all institutions, by 



170 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

showing* the historical genesis, or the em- 
pirical conditions in which they have been 
manifested. This is the method of Her- 
bert Spencer, denying- antecedent and con- 
comitant rationality, or the teleological 
view. But teleology alone can account for 
rationality and progress. The true first 
cause, as Aristotle and Hegel have seen, 
is "final cause" Both of them, and also 
the writers of " Lux Mundi" quote with 
approval the first utterance of this truth 
outside of Scripture. That is the saying 
of Anaxagoras : " Reason (Nors) governs 
the world/' 

This conception of rationality in history 
leads to the recognition that the real at 
any time is the rational for that time — e.g., 
the Mosaic economy for the Jews before 
Christ ; and to the kindred conception 
that might makes right — e.g., the Roman 
and the Christian domination of the bar- 
barians. That is, Reason, or Divine Wis- 
dom, has been able to " order the unruly 
wills and affections of sinful men." But 






IN RELIGION. 171 

it also forbids the ignoring of historical 
perspective. It implies degrees of better 
and worse, though " the soul of the world 
is £*ood." It forbids any abstract re- 
affirmation, no less than any abstract de- 
nial of the ideals, faith and deeds of the 
past. " Moses said, . . . butl say unto 
you." It also forbids the mere glorifica- 
tion of any status quo of any existing 
form, as well as the uncritical acceptance 
of forms of the past. It does not permit 
a consecration of all the past history of 
the Church as ultimate, nor the idealizing 
of an arbitrarily chosen part of (hat history 
— the reverence "for a past that never 
was a present.' 5 It interprets the Church 

as the institution and organ of Christian 

consciousness. Ii is the progressive em- 
bodiment of the Divine idea as to man's 

relation to God on the side of emotion, 

imagination and devoted will. It is the 
standing record of the rational education 

of man on his religious side l! Ilnis pre- 
sents a serirs of increasingly adequate 



172 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

manifestations and vehicles of the Lax 
Mundi, positing successive forms, and 
successively transcending' and fulfilling 
them in richer shape. It is the highest 
embodiment of the religious relation in 
corporate and institutional form. It is a 
complex of the Divine idea and of human 
needs, feelings, convictions and concep- 
tions, through which the idea takes form 
and shines. It has a warp and a woof. 
The woof is not constitutive, as empiricists 
affirm, but the warp is. 

'Tis that divine 
Idea taking shrine 
Of crystal flesh, 
Through which to shine. 

The Church militant is the self-realiza- 
tion of Spirit in temporal process. All its 
merely temporal conditions do not account 
for its genesis and development. These 
would be merely chaos without the opera- 
tive Lax Mundi, without the logical pre- 
supposition of creative Reason as the 
chronological antecedent and concomitant, 



IN RELIGION. 173 

or architect. In the beginning-, and 
throughout, " was the Word." And yet the 
historical conditions which determined its 
form and progress were of divine choice 
and work. The world was prepared for the 
incarnation, and its subsequent develop- 
ment in life, thought and worship. The 
divine immanence lay hack of chaos, pro- 
toplasm, and all the higher conditions — 
physical, social, intellectual and political — 
that have entered into historical Chris- 
tianity. Without the culture of Greece 
and Rome as well as of Judea, Christianity 
could never have been what it is. 

Both of these Hegelian conceptions of 
Reason as corporate and objective, and 
of the philosophy of history, have been 

SO thoroughly assimilated by tlie writers 
of t he Lux Mundi as to dominate all their 
apologetics for the Christian Church. 

So, too, they are thoroughly permeated 

by Hegel's conception of revelation, (hi 
the Godward side it is manifestation; on 
the manward side ii isdiscovery. All dis- 



174 REASON AXD AUTHORITY 

covery made by man in any and every 
sphere of life and thought is revelation. 
All history is the record of man's seeking 
God, who had always and everywhere 
been seeking man. The rationality of his- 
tory is but another form of statement for 
revelation. The modern rediscovery of the 
truth of God's immanence is really a rev- 
elation through philosophers and scien- 
tists. So. too. the poets of the Vedas and 
the Gathas. the Egyptian priest, and every 
man that conieth into the world, were 
vehicles of the Divine revelation, enabled, 
at least in a measure, to discover or spell 
out the manifestations of God (p. 170). 
Both the orthodox and the ecclesiastical 
conceptions of revelation have passed in 
music out of sight, in this larger concep- 
tion. 

The same is true as to their conception 
of authority. Reason is always and every- 
where both the Law and the Lawgiver. 
Hooker's conception of law. its origin and 
sanction in its manifold forms, was far 



IN RELIGION. 178 

ahead of that of his times. These writers 
have not " shelved " him. His view fits 
into their conception of "The Religion of 
the Incarnation/' and of the authority of 
the Church. 

Their philosophy of history inevitably 
leads them to the maintenance of the 
authority of the Church over and through 
the individual. But it also modifies, 
rationalizes, their appeal to " hear the 
Church/' believe its creeds, join in its 
worship, and practice its morality. This 
is especially noticeable in the essays on 
" The Christian Doctrine of God/' " The 
Incarnation and the Development of Dog- 
ma/ 5 " The Holy Spirit and Inspiration," 
and "The Church." Extended quotation 
in proof of this is beyond our limits. The 
reader may refer to Mr. Moberly's inter- 
pretation of the Atlianasian Creed (p. 215), 
to Mr. Gore's * k perfectly simple idea " of 
authority (p. 271), to Mr, Qlingsworth's 
answer to the objection thai mutability 
and development of creed are opposed to 



BEASOX ASD AUTHORITY 

its divine authoritativ p. 163), and 

to Mr. Loci: teaching 

of the Church (p. 323-4 . 

Reason is •• . oactical " as well as 
are.* It is not a m ik idea. It 

fulfils itself on earth by instituting- i 
iu ^ It has been thus ful- 

filling- itself in and through the Church, 
Lchis therefore objective authoritative 
reason foi t :_ Christian. 1 
Churchman is -essential to being a good 
Christian, a good man. In and through 
its social ethos man is to be confirmed and 
educated in the religious relation. It t 
with it the marks of m ional 

authority of all G en constitutive 

environments. But mis si >n t ■ its author- 
ity is the rational s 
diate subjective and r :1 individual 

in the whole historic life .; the great 
J of a common Lawgiver and 
Pith 

So wi ling is this world pc 

day, that in Europe and America i 



IN RELIGION. 1" 

nearly every man behind and before. In the 
womb, school, cradle and society it condi- 
tions and stamps nearly every one with i 
genial mark. From the cradle to the grave 
it appeals to its children with the voice of 
paternal authority. It asks for no other 
than filial response and recognition of its 
past, present and promised beneficence in 
educing the religious relation implicit in 
man as man. This is the sort of authority 
ascribed to Church, creed and cult in this 
volume. Of infallibility and arbitrary or 
uncriticised authority there is scarcely a 
trace. On the contrary, it is maintained 
that credo ut intelligam is founded upon 
an ultimate underlying iutellexi ut 
derem (p. 189). The core of the authority 
of the Church is the fact of its being the 
adequate ethical and historical medium of 
the religious Life. 



178 REASON AND AUTHORITY 

Two Criticisms of Their Work. 

Their Conception of the Church too Insular to 
be quite Catholic. 

And yet one criticism must be offered as 
to their conception of the Church. It is too 
insular to be quite catholic. They do not 
use a map constructed on a sufficiently 
large scale, when defining- the boundaries 
of the Church. The idola tribus still 
receives some homage in their modern 
Oxford. It is this which prevents them 
recognizing* that outside of the Episcopal 
branches of the Church there are also 
other vital and fruitful branches. " Hin- 
ter dem Berge sind auch Leute." Outside 
of the Greek, Roman and Anglican com- 
munions there are also Christian commu- 
nions. The whole rich fruitful Christian 
life of modern Europe and America is a 
part of history. Their historio-philosophi- 
cal method would seem to compel them to 
recognize and synthesize all this in their 
genial conception of the Church, in order 



IN RELIGIOX. 

to make it catholic, as well as in order 
to maintain their Hegelian philosophy of 
histor} 7 — that history is not an apostasy, 
but that No?\s governs the world. 

Yet Mr. Lock feels compelled to draw a 
distinction within the limits of the baptized, 
between those within Episcopal folds and 
those of other folds, who are schismatics. 
Thus not only the Dissenters in England 
but Kirkmen in Scotland, State-Church- 
men in Germany, Sweden and other 
countries, are ruled out of the Saviour's 
one flock, and the validity of their minis- 
try and sacraments denied. They really 
base their apologetic for the Catholic 
Church upon its social religious power for 
good. Yet these other national Churches 
are as efficient forms of instituted Chris- 
tianity and as valid powers for promoting 
the extension of the incarnation as the 
Church of England. They manifest the 
same historical vindication as the ( hurch 
of Rome or the Church ^t England, as 

forth by these Writers, They are .simply 



180 REASON AND A UTHORITY 

false to their spirit and method, in failing 
to integrate these forms as real organic 
members of the Catholic Church. In this 
thej 7 are neither historical, nor philo- 
sophical, nor Hegelian, nor Christian.* 
They have begun with the true catholic 
method of studying Church history, but 
they only partially realize the results to 
which this method will inevitably lead 
them. 

This method looks at history as an eter- 
nal violation of law, because it is life and 
movement which destroy that which has 
been in fulfilling it — which shatters laws 
which have shackled the human spirit. 
Thus Jesus Christ violated the Law to ful- 
fil it in the Gospel. Thus the Reformation 
violated the ecclesiastical law to realize 
a larger and more ethical extension of the 
Incarnation . This method of history must 

* For a full discussion of this question of the 
Church, I may refer to my Appendix on Christian 
Unity, in "Studies in HegeTs Philosophy of Re- 
ligion" 






IN RELIGION. 181 

be allowed proper scope or be denied en- 
tirely. This latter can only be done by 1 
who set themselves above history — too 
hxxsy building" the tombs of the old proph- 
ets to see the new ones in their midst. 
The Church is always a means to the 
end of the perfecting' of humanity. It 
meets new needs at new epochs with tem- 
porary or ultimate abrogation of laws 
hitherto essential to this end. Accom- 
plished history indicates at least a tempo- 
rary violation of Episcopacy as the normal 
type of Church polity. 

If the development of Christian lite in 
new forms since, and owing to, the Refor- 
mation; if this break with the old law 
seems like sinful schism, it is owing to a 
defective theory which needs replacing by 
;i theory more adequate to the facts. A 
narrow, arroganl and formal Anglicanism 
is surely not adequate to the facts, nor to 
the work of restoring the old law iA' Epis- 

COpaCytO meet the Dew life. And vet we 
look forward and work tor this larger re- 



1 8 2 RE A S OX AND A UTHOR LTY 

suit. The integration of the new and the 
old, of Protestantism and Catholicism, is a 
goal that seems as necessary as it seems 

distant. 

2) Hie danger of our uncritical restoration of 
so-called Catholic customs, or the vagaries 

of Ritualism. 
Another criticism, too. may be offered as 
to their conception of the so-called " Cath- 
olic heritage/' which their party is labor- 
ing so zealously to restore. We And 
but little objectionable in the text of 
their volume, except this one narrow 
conception of the Church. "We do not 
know how much of effete form and ritual 
they believe in adopting. But knowing 
them to be leaders of that party which has 
sought a restoration of all sorts of ecclesias- 
tical rubbish, we feel tempted to read be- 
tween the lines of the text and make them 
participes en' minis. This revival of 
••catholic customs" by a party ne plus 
ultra Protestant dissenters is an incoming 
flood in our Church that needs to be met 






IN RELIGION. 183 

with some hesitating criticism. Much of 
it is unintellectual and unethical romanti- 
cism. All that can be done to really adorn 
the Bride of Christ, all the beauty of wor- 
ship that is genuinely artistic and not 
tawdry ornament, is to be welcomed. But 
let this "be done decently and in order " 
by the Church, and not by the self-assumed 
infallibility of Protestant priests. Let it. 
too, be done apart from the desire to mag- 
nify the sacerdotal function of the presby- 
ter above his ethical [unction as a leader 
and inspirer of men. The vagaries of in- 
dividuals in this line in our ( Ihurch far ex- 
ceed the variations of Protestants, with 
their extempore methods. 

Welcome Their Spirit and Method, if 
not all of Their Results. 

However, we find no expressed desire on 
the part of these writers to be the promo- 
ters of mere ritualism. They seem to be 
thoroughly enough permeated by the his- 
torical spirit to avoid such nonsense, I ie1 



184 REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. 

us take them at their text, as striving' for 
the restoration of the organic and oecu- 
menical elements of the Church/some of 
which we may confess have been neglected 
by Protestants. They are only seeking to 
restore as reason what had been given up 
because it appeared as unreason. This is 
but the return movement of history ful- 
filling by temporary or partial abrogation 
of old law. The Church is like the fabled 
Phoenix. Growing old, she fired her nest 
at the Reformation; but in the flames she 
is now seeking and finding renovation and 
development. We bid these new leaders 
of this movement all hail. 

If the so-called Catholic party in our 
Church will follow these new leaders and 
interpreters of "The Faith" they may be- 
come truly Catholic, and be in the fore- 
front of the Church militant. If not, the 
party is doomed" to the extinction which 
all isolation and lack of intelligence in- 
volves. 



PRESS NOTICES. 



Extracts from Press Notices of Sterrett's " Stud- 
ies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion." 

SECOND EDITION NOW OUT. 

Price, $2.00. 



" A more vigorous and straightforward piece of 
writing, as well as of thinking, it has not often been 
my fortune to meet with. The book before us is fairly 
buoyant in its vigor, fairly aggressive in its straight- 
forwardness. The purpose of the book is, as Dr. 
Sterrett frankly informs us in his preface, apologetic. 
But he has a worthy conception of apologetics. It is 
nothing more nor less than that a philosophy of religion 
is the only final apologetics for Christianity. . . . He 
has produced a work of great value. . . . One feature 
of the book is the spirit of honesty, of fairness, of love 
for straightforward intellectual dealing, which ani- 
mates what Dr. Sterrett writes. It is sometimes re- 
ported that our theological seminaries are not favor- 
able to intellectual light and honesty. There will 
hardly be a question about the seminary from which 
issues this book and the one of Dr. ECedney. Another 
feature is that rare thing in philosophical writing— the 
happy and really illustrative use of the dangerous 
metaphor." — Prof. John Dewey, In The Andover 
Review. 

lt A book for study and prolonged considerat i« »n. No 
one can read it without receiving much intellectual and 
spiritual stimulus. . . . The Episcopal Church mav well 
lay to heart the thought that if the Bishops of the lat- 
ter part of the reign of Elizabeth had shown a tithe of 
the spirit that breathes through Dr. Sterrett's | 
there would never have been any Congregationalism 
either in England or America. M — Bibliotneca Sacra. 

u Its spirit is sanguine, Its results are cheerful, while 
Its method of constantly striving towards the widest 

and most reconciling point of view is, after all, the 
eternally best one ; so it is sate to predict \'ov its author 

a certain sneeess." — The Nation. 

u A clear and Intelligent criticism is made ol H< 
chief doctrines In s style remarkably free from the 
mysteries of philosophical language. Eeavy and 
scholastic phrases are interpreted Into vivid and itrik 
Lng English." The Boston Journal. 



PRESS NOTICES. 



"The American book I hold worthy of a place be- 
side * Lux MundV ... It gives the logical method 
which ' Lux Mundi ' applies in a less technical and more 
popular treatment. They are studies at first hand . . . 
earnest and noble, and offer noble aid to thought that 
would climb the loftiest and most difficult steep of 
knowledge. The path they trace is clear to the peak." 
—Rev. R. A. Holland, D.D., in The Living Church. 

•'Prof. Sterrett has not attempted a translation, but 
an analysis with a lively running commentary, which 
applies the principles of the work to present conditions 
and controversies. Dr. Sterrett is always lively and 
readable." — The American, Phila. 

" A scholarly book, in which 'Hegel's Philosophy of 
Religion ' is neither rendered nor paraphrased, but an- 
alyzed and considered in a sympathetic manner, and 
from an enlightened point of view." — The Neiv York 
Tribune. 

''The author has worked very fairly and fully, 
without evasion, and relies upon the intrinsic merit of 
the case. He makes a positive addition to the equip- 
ment of the scholar who wishes to study Hegel." — 
Public Opinion. 

"It has the great merits of luminousness and life. 
Dr. Sterrett traverses much of the same ground as Dr. 
John Caird, to whom he acknowledges his obligations ; 
but his own treatment is more ample, varied and 
warm, with the generous ardor of an earnest disciple. 
Hence it will not only be an excellent supplement to 
Dr. Caird's book, but, of the two, it will be better 
adapted to the great majority of readers." — The Liter- 
ary World, Boston. 

" The author makes the abstruse subject as intelligi- 
ble as it well can be; in this succeeding better, we think, 
than did Prof. Caird, to whom he refers in a very 
complimentary manner." — New York Observer. 

"Dr. Sterrett repeats, amplifies and illustrates with 
such skill that the reader must be obtuse indeed who 
does not rise from the volume with a comparatively 
clear notion of Hegel's thought." — The Boston Post. 

" My object, however, is not to discuss Hegel, but to 
commend to the readers of this Review the work of Dr. 
Sterrett. It is, on its face, a study of Hegel ; but it is 
something far better than this alone. It is an introduc- 
tion to a form of theologic thought which is at once 



PRESS NOTICES. 



helpful and stimulating. Amid the controversies of 
the time, it opens a view of fundamental truth v. 
may be a solvent for many doubts and differences. Dr. 
Sterrett's style is fresh and often striking." — Prof. C. 
C. Everett, D.D. 

'•Dr. Sterrett has given to the elucidation of Hegel 
those literary and critical abilities which make his 
book a valuable contribution to theology. No one can 
read it without profit. Dr. Sterrett is a helpful guide. 
He is careful, honest, frank and scholarly." — The 
Standard of the Cross and the Church, 

11 Dr. Sterrett proceeds to expound 'Hegel's Philos- 
ophy of Religion ' in his own way— that is, to American- 
ize it. Without making use of the German philos- 
opher's cumbrous terms and technicalities, he sets 
forth his ideas in clear, forcible modern English. The 
work is not a translation, but rather a transfusion." — 
The Critic. 

" This work of Dr. Sterrett deserves the careful study 
of all thoughtful persons who are conscientiously 
ing to find the ground of all religion, and especially the 
ground on which Christianity may justly claim a place 
above and apart from all other religions. ... In Dr. 
Sterrett's compact volume one may find Hegel sum- 
marized in a helpful manner. He translates important 
and telling passages from the original, and suppli 
these by statements and explanations of his own. It is 
a great advantage to this book, giving it a sin 
claim over other books that attempt to state II 
views on religion, that its author is in sympathy with 
the great thinker whom he expounds. to the student 
of history, no less than to the student of philos- 
ophy and theology, this book will commend itsell an 
giving the essential ideas thai have upborne the civili- 
zations of the past and formed the great national pur- 
les have woven the texture of the 
world's history."— Hon. William T. Harris, LL.D., 
r. s ( lommissioner of Educat ion. 

"To thoughtful inquirers this book must be of 
timable Bervice, since it opens the K ;lt, ' s ol a r< 
where onr deepest questionings And answer. It would 
seem, then, that Itoughl ordial welcome 

from all who have al heaii the Interests of Chi 
truth."— The ( 'huroh Review, 



